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Interview with Dr. Hugo Keesing

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Contributor

Keesing, Hugo ; McKiernan, Stephen

Description

Dr. Hugo Keesing is a Dutch-American popular culture historian, an educator and a pop music archivist who has an extensive collection of Vietnam war music. He has degrees from Duke University, George Washington University and a Ph.D. in Behavior Research from Adelphi University.

Date

2010-05-01

Rights

In copyright

Date Modified

2017-03-14

Is Part Of

McKiernan Interviews

Extent

171:38

Transcription

McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Hugo Keesing
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 1 May 2010
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(Start of Interview)

SM (00:00:03):
Testing one, two.

SM (00:00:06):
The first question, and I have to check this occasionally too. I want to, how did you become who you are? You were mentioning a few things, but how did you become who you are in terms of your interest in the (19)60s and interest in Vietnam? What inspired you to be a collector of historic information on records and music from that era, but just to have an interest in that period?

HK (00:00:38):
There are, I am sure, several factors. As I have mentioned, part of it was what was out of necessity. I arrived here off the boat, if you will, here in the US in October 1951. I was seven years old. My father had just gotten a position with the International Monetary Fund in Washington. So three brothers, I am number three of four. And we arrived, I think my English vocabulary was three or four words. I could say yes, no. For some reason I knew corn flakes, I am not sure why. But we arrived on a Tuesday and on a Thursday I was enrolled in public schools in Washington. So dad wasted no time getting us in school. And it was sort of sink or swim. We had to learn Now we were very fortunate, DC is a very international city, but that particular elementary school had a sixth grader who was Dutch, but who had lived in the US for a bunch of years. So I remember that we had permission to... There were real problem that I could leave my classroom, go to his classroom, bring him back, and he would translate to say what was I saying. The expectation was that we would all come home, family would have dinner together, and mom and dad would ask us, what was going on. And the idea was to learn five to 10 new English words every night. And one brother in particular, the one who was 13 months older, he and I quickly learned that it was through comic books, and baseball cards, and sports that we began interacting even when our English was pretty poor. So that got into the pop culture things. Now, my family, the Keesing family, my dad in particular, I guess if I go into the family tree, it is clear that there are a number of people who have been archivist historians for many, many years. Something called the Keesing Archives was a major source for news in the Netherlands. Now, all of that is online, but you can still find huge books. So for whatever reason, I am not going to argue that this would be genetic. But there was an interest in archiving, and I seem to have picked up on that. In my family for as long as I can remember there was always a tremendous interest in learning. Dad was a professor, mom was a Montessori teacher. My grandfather was a math teacher. So the idea of learning, experiencing, traveling, doing new things has been part of my life since, as long as I can remember. We were in Holland during World War II. It is unfortunate that it was the Brits who dropped a bomb that took out our home. So I am lucky to be here. My dad lost... And I did not know this at the time, but he was a collector of books. Books on economics. And I did not learn that he lost his entire collection in that bombing until the memorial service when he passed away in 1972. And the Dutch Minister of Finance, who had been his boss, said that one of the difficulties, or one of the things that really my dad never talked about was that he lost his collection. So he was a stamp collector, perhaps because my family lost virtually everything they had. Mom was one who was prepared to say things. Fortunately we had homes that had basements or attics and my mother could always come up with a reason why something should not be thrown out because it might have good use some other time. What that meant was she was also tolerant of our collecting simply the Keesings collect, everybody has, each of my brothers had a collection that was sort of unique, but mom, never put pressure on me. But evidently the kind that you got that things had to go, it was, it was good to throw it out.

SM (00:05:30):
It was not everything but certain things.

HK (00:05:32):
So I am very fortunate. I have my baseball cards, I have my records, things that I wanted to save, I was able to save. And we never, ever threw out books. And books were what was seen as an investment. You learn from them, you pick them up, you read them again and again. And so all these strands were clear from very early on. And I became a teacher. I taught my first psychology course for George Washington University in 1966. More reasons to acquire scholarly books. But from the very beginning of my teaching, I was interested in using some of these other things that I had found very important in my own learning, the popular culture. So I began trying to introduce maybe a song or something for her, studying some psychological construct. And I said, "Look, if you are wondering what it is, listen to," and I would play a piece of a record. For example, I found that even in the late (19)60s, that students liked this. And so all of these professional strands, my interest in teaching my interest in popular culture, I have been very fortunate being able to weave them all together. It was when I began using them, that also legitimized them as professional tools. So I was in the very fortunate position of being able to buy records and books on music and sheet music things, and have them all supporting my teaching. And therefore, a portion of what I invested in those books was tax-deductible when I was filing income tax. And people said, "Wow, how did your max?" I said, "I do not know whether it is lucky or whether it is good planning, but it is all just really worked out." And so now that I am formally retired, I am informally still using all of this stuff. As I said, whether it is for presentations to seniors, whether it is to work on a book on Vietnam, whether it is to lend stuff, own stuff, it is all still very relevant to me. And it is exciting.

SM (00:08:06):
What was it about that, you know, moved to the United States? You learned the English language through baseball cards and some of these other items, you learned English, but what was it about 1950s culture? The culture that is oftentimes really attacked when you talk about (19)60s culture, A lot of the (19)60s people were attacking the late (19)40s and (19)50s as being a period of like IBM mentality. Everybody copies everybody else. There is no room for individualism. It is all the corporate mentality. And of course, there are a lot of bad things happening with racism throughout the United States. Things were kind of coated over. And a lot of people that grew up during this period felt kind of good because they did not have any hardships like their parents had had during World War II or prior to World War II, because the question I am asking, what is it about the 1950s culture that turned you on, but turned so many other people off?

HK (00:09:09):
To me, it is very simple. It was mine. And I was seven when the (19)50s began, and I was 17 when they ended. So that was my youth, if you will. And the fact that it was my culture, I do not think people, my generation were knocking it. It was older people. So what was happening then, and whether it was Ricky Nelson's mind, Annette Funicello, and I met her in 19, late (19)90s. And it was incredible. It is a funny story. If we have got time, I will be happy to tell you that. So I was not aware, for example, that there were congressional committees investigating comic books or that the editor of Mad Magazine was called before Congress for, because MAD and other comics that were considered to be orally objectionable. That did not even enter my mind. I was not listening to people knocking Elvis Presley because his behavior was immodest or, I liked his music. We danced to it. So the objections to (19)50s culture were being made by an older generation. It did not sink in that with regard to music, what I remember more, for example, is getting really excited when I heard and record by the Platters, My Prayer. And I said, "Well, listen to this. This is great." And she smiled. She said, "Yeah, I know that." I said, "What do you mean, you know that?" "Well, it was also popular in my day." And I said, "No-no-no." She said, "Yeah." And eventually I checked and it came out 1933. And I resented that. I was not happy with the fact that my music, I mean, hey, it was not her fault, but I sort of suggested, if there are other songs that I like, please do not tell me that they had a previous life. And whether it was Fats Domino, Blueberry Hill was from the (19)40s. And My dream Book Comes Home was from the (19)30s. There was a lot of music in the (19)50s, which was recycled with a rock and roll or a new beat. But because it was the first version I heard became my music. And so if there was a generation gap or conflict, and my parents were very tolerant, as long as we worked hard and we got good grades in school and did not get into trouble, I was permitted, encouraged to do lots of things. But the fact that things which I regarded as part of my immediate life, I really did not want to know that it-

SM (00:12:05):
Had a previous.

HK (00:12:05):
...might have belonged to somebody else. And of course, many, many years later, in the early (19)70s, I came back from overseas. My wife and I were entertaining some people who met there who had a 10 or 11 year old daughter that they brought with him. And at one point I said, "Can I play some music?" Because I had all these records. She said she wanted to hear Puppy Love. And so I put on Paul Anka and she said, "No-no, that is not the right one." And she wanted to hear Donny Osmond. And I said, "But this is the original one." Well, it was not to her, the Donny Osmond version. It was history repeating itself just as The Platters version of My Prayer was mine. And I did not want to know about the previous one. Dotty Osmond was hers, and she did not want to, did not care to know that Paul Anka had recorded this record and popularized it a decade or so earlier.

SM (00:13:01):
Well, it is interesting because when you think of (19)50s culture, Pat Boone seems to be more in sync than even Elvis, with the shaking of the hips.

HK (00:13:10):
Pat Boone was more in sync with parents. Pat was less threatening. Pat Boone used correct grammar, and he went to college. And I do not think that parents of 15-year-old daughters were worried that Pat would have a kind of influence on him, that Elvis might.

SM (00:13:28):
I wrote something down here because I wanted your thoughts on the music of the period that Boomers have been alive, which is the period from four, from (19)46 to (19)64, and of course the Beatles come in here in 1964, which changed so many things. But prior to that, there was Elvis, there was Chubby Checker, there was, and what I consider, I use this term crush music, girls have a crush, which was, yeah-yeah. Which would be Ricky Nelson, Bobby Darren, Fabian, Bobby D., Paul Anka, Bobby Rydell, the Four Seasons. Then I put some of the females in here, Leslie Gore, Petula Clark, Dusty Springfield, Lulu, Marianne Faithful.

HK (00:14:12):
Probably even a little later. I would the Heartthrobs, well, Annette, Connie Francis, there were not Connie Stevens.

SM (00:14:25):
Teresa Brewer.

HK (00:14:25):
Theresa Brewer was earlier. Theresa Brewer was really from (19)50 to about (19)56. And you had the Theresa Brewers, the Patty Pages, that I call them, the double names. You had Doris Day, double D, Joanie, James, double J, Patty Page, Goki Grant. I do not know whether these were their original names or people were just into alliteration. Rosemary Clooney, Joe Stafford, those are artists that I remember hearing. And in fact, the first record that I asked my parents to buy for me was Rosemary Clooney's, This Ole House in 1954. So I know that in (19)54 I was beginning to listen to the popular music. That is just a year before Rock Around the Clock. I have gone back and I have collected all that music. In retrospect, it sounds rather good. It does not have the same personal connections that beginning with The Platters in late (19)55, I mean (19)55 through (19)60, I can probably tell you where I was, who I was with, what I was doing when I heard most of those records for the first time. If I hear, I mean, okay, so that was Rahova Beach, where this was a junior high school dance. I never had learned to read music. I do not play music. I channeled all of my musical interests into collecting records, learning who sang what was on the flip side. So I really have been a music historian. I was a DJ at Many Points, a music historian. So music has been incredibly important. And if I have a regret, it is that I still have not learned to read music. And my grandsons right now saying, "Opa, it is really easy." When you have got an eight-year-old telling you it is really easy, and here is how you learn to play the piano. So they gave me the strip that I can put on the piano upstairs, which is supposed to help me understand the chords. But I carry got oh, 50,000 songs in my head that I can start singing.

SM (00:16:43):
Was there, would you say, or would you admit that the Patty Pages, that those types singers in the (19)50s were very symbolic of what the (19)50s were truly all about? That it was when Elvis shook his hips, when Chuck Barry did his thing, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Pumping Gas and Little Richard, that these were the ones that scared people because they were, and Bo Diddly, they were a little bit different. And so they were not very... Were people that thought they were a threat. They were like absolutely beats. They were they, to the beat writers of the period different than some of the writers? Would you compare them? Were they predecessors to this attitude that things were changing when the (19)60s came?

HK (00:17:32):
By the time the (19)60s came, I think there had been some major changes. As I was writing my dissertation 40 years ago, some of these ideas have been floating around. I was able to formalize, for example, up until the mid (19)50s, there really was not a youth culture. Kids were expected to be sort of miniature versions of their parents. They were expected to dress the same as their parents. They were expected to go into the same jobs or occupations, do the same things, like the same things as their parents. So they were scaled down versions of adults. And therefore, there was not music that was intended for young people, there were not clothing styles that were necessarily keyed on young people. It was not, I think, until the early to mid (19)50s that the war was far enough in the background and that there was sufficient, that economically, middle class parents were at a point where kids could get more than a quarter allowance. And I was getting a nickel and then 10 cents, then a quarter. Well, with a quarter a week I could buy baseball cards and maybe a comic book, but not much else. But beginning in the mid to late (19)50s and kids started getting sufficient money to become consumers, and as kids became consumers, there was a whole world out there ready to take their money and to begin creating commerce aimed at kids’ things specifically aimed at kids. And one way to make it attractive to kids was to make sure that parents did not like it. Parents liked Pat Boone. So teenagers my age we are less inclined. If he is okay with mom and dad, and I am trying to separate myself as an individual and begin to establish my own identity, then I should like somebody my parents do not like. And that could be Elvis. And so a lot of growing up, being a teenager is learning to differentiate yourself from your parents.

SM (00:20:03):
Was that kind of like, I can remember two specific instances of people that were admired by the Boomer parents. That is Arthur Godfrey, when he fired Julius LaRosa for having an affair with some other person, he was very popular. And the other one was Mitch Miller. When he had an affair with Leslie Uggams, he was unpopular. And he went like...

HK (00:20:28):
But Arthur Godfrey was, he was in DC and I guess I was aware of him, but certainly as far as an influence on my generation, I do not think so. Not at all. And McGuire Sisters were less interesting than the Shirelles or the Chantels? Right. So if it was associated with adults, then it was intrinsically less interesting than something that my parents did not know about. As an example of my family, there was an artist who had a [inaudible], Nervous Norvus. He had a song Transfusion about cars racing and wrecking and needing blood transfusions. It was the sort of thing that parents thoroughly disliked because it first, musically, it was terrible. And singing and glorifying car wrecks was not what they had. But he also had a song called Ape Call at various points in this record, and I can play it for you, there would be this loud scream. Well, evidently my dad did not like that. And the only time I can remember mom commenting on music is when she told my brother and I, please do not play that when your father's at home, or if you play it, make sure, because what we would love to do is we would play the record and then just before the scream, we turned the volume all the way up. So this really, really loud scream, but evidently Dad did not care for that at all. And so that was the only song we were told should not be played when dad was home, for the rest, as long as the music did not get all that loud, I guess it was a fair game. They were letting us grow up and find stuff that was ours.

SM (00:22:31):
Would you say that just as in the 1950s, the difference between Pat Boone and Elvis? Elvis was kind of a revolutionary person. The Beatles was the revolutionary group that came (19)64. Really, when you are talking (19)46 to (19)63, and then all of a sudden in (19)64, the Beatles come, everything changes from then on. Is that?

HK (00:22:56):
I think the reasons for the popularity of Elvis and the Beatles in my mind are quite different. I mean, Elvis clearly was a rejection of the kind of puritanical, uptight values, the traditions. Elvis was a white boy who sang black. Elvis was threatening Elvis sneered, if you had a 15-year-old daughter, you worried about Elvis taking her virginity or something like that. Pat Boone was the antithesis. Pat Boone did not kiss his co-star, Shirley Jones, because he was married. So Pat was good, and Elvis was bad, and Elvis was in the same old as James Dean and Marlon Brando. He represented the counterculture that is in represented the change, the new energy, the new vitality, the rejection of some of the old cultures. We will never know. I do not know if the Beatles would had the impact, if Kennedy had not been assassinated. In November (19)63, there had been Beatle records. There had been a couple of Beatle records available in the US in (19)63. I first heard them in Holland in (19)63 and thought, okay, interesting. But it was not anything spectacular. But Americans needed, especially America's youth, needed something to take their minds off. Dallas, Texas, in November (19)63, the Beatles were the antidote to the sort of, call it almost generational depression, if you will. I was, what, a junior at Duke. I remember where I was when I heard Walter Cronkite announce the shootings, et cetera. That was something I will not forget. I was not initially enamored with the Beatles, I was much more in tune with Phil Specter and the Girl Group sound, The Ronettes and The Crystals.

SM (00:25:22):
Oh, that was great.

HK (00:25:23):
I mean, fabulous stuff. My early (19)60s artists who are now all the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame were Orison, Del Shannon, and Jean Pitney, because I thought musically, they were ahead of, they sang melodies that you could sing. Those were my favorites. But the Beatles and the British Invasion were a means by which America's youth could turn away from Dallas. I mean, it was not only the music, but again, there was a revolution in styles, whether it was haircuts or whether it was the clothing styles that were personified by Twiggy, and what was her name? Mary Quant, I think it was. But the miniskirts, the whole British European thing became a way to refocus youthful energy, interest, et cetera. So it was not necessarily rejecting the parents' values and the parents' culture, but it was sort of, okay, we need to break out of this depression. This young youthful president is gone, he is dead. We need to find something to reenergize us. And to me, the Beatles were initially seen as clean cut. It was The Rolling Stones who were the antithesis. These were the scruffy guys who got arrested for pissing in public places and stuff like that. But the early British sound is pretty mild. I mean, these are sort of funny little tunes. Hermann's Hermits, [inaudible] The Pacemakers, Peter and Gordon, different from the Kinks, or the Rolling Stones, or the Yardbirds, who were, again, who were blues influenced more of the black rhythm, blues culture, et cetera. So there was that difference as well.

SM (00:27:32):
Yeah, when you are talking about the change in the culture, obviously when we are talking mid to late (19)60s, we are talking the true counterculture, which is dress, long hair, music, drugs, sexual revolution, living some sort of communal lifestyle was really late (19)60s, (19)70s, particularly after the war ended. But then you had the groups like The Doors and Janice Joplin, Jimmy Hendricks, so many, we can list so many different groups, and were really, students were turning on. That was really a rejection of the (19)50s. It was really, we are going to change the world. We are going to...

HK (00:28:19):
There were so many things. I was an undergraduate from (19)61 to (19)65. I was dating a young lady who was also in college, and I remember in (19)63, I would think that Gwen's mother gave me a copy of The Feminine Mystique and encouraged me to read it because her daughter was going to grow up to be someone different from, let us say, the role models for the girls who went to college to get their MRS.

SM (00:28:56):
Yes.

HK (00:28:59):
In the, let us see. In (19)62, one of the figures on campus that people knew was Peter Clawford. He was a biologist. He worked boots to class, but he was also taking students to Greensboro on sit-ins. And in Durham, there were lots of places where blacks were not welcomed. I do not believe there were any black undergraduates in Duke in (19)61, (19)62, (19)63. On the other hand, when the KKK came marching through Durham and trying to get a permit, I think, to come on campus, most of the Duke students were out there in a counter-protest. So while Duke was still a Southern school, segregated in terms of its politics, it was beginning to catch up when what was happening in the (19)60s. So you had civil rights. I had a roommate in college who was a member of the, what was it? The Young Americans for Freedom.

SM (00:30:11):
Yeah, that is the conservative right?

HK (00:30:13):
Yes. And Bill Buckley, who was a Goldwater. I was not campaigning in (19)64, but had I been able to vote, I would have voted for Johnson. And he was voting. He was very, very conservative. And so, one of the things I learned early on that did not interest me was politics. We did not talk politics. We coexisted as roommates, but with the tacit agreement, if you will, that we talked about school, we talked about girlfriends, but I have never been one to get drawn into political debates or arguments. I just do not find it very interesting. But it is clear that things were changing. So the role for women, my girlfriend's mom brought that home, politics were changing. Race relations were changing. We were concerned about a war in Cuba, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs. We had an air raid drill at Duke. I learned where the air raid shelters were located, not because anyone knew about Vietnam, but because of Cuba. Even in (19)65, when I graduated and my draft status was quickly changed from 2S to 1A, I do not think at that point I was all that concerned about the military guy. I had a brother who was in the army. I had another brother who was in law school and who was working very hard to keep his deferment. And I had planned to go either to medical school or going to clinical psychology, and was fairly sure at that point, that was still a deferment category. So the wars or the conflicts were out there, but were not a central part of what I was doing. But I became aware of some of these things through music. Eve of Destruction was Barry McGuire, 1965, the Houston Eastern World is exploding, violent, slur and bullet exploding.

SM (00:32:37):
I remember when he was on TV for the first time, singing that live. I am not sure if that was Shindig or Hullabaloo or...

HK (00:32:43):
Those were my shows.

SM (00:32:46):
I love those shows.

HK (00:32:49):
And so these were records that I was collecting. I was listening to Where Have All Flowers Gone by The Kingston Trio, not connecting it specifically, but becoming aware that music was not just, as you say about boy meets girl, boy loses girl, et cetera. It was more than love themes that in the early (19)60s, music was beginning to change and beginning to become what I would call in my dissertation, a barometer, an early warning system of things that were in flux. So a song by The Exciters called Tell Him, this is a girl telling another girl. If you like a guy, tell him, do not wait for him. In other words, become more active. Do not be passive that girls can ask boys out or songs about war in a general way. Masters of War, Bob Dylan, Soldier Boy. I would have connected that more with Berlin probably, or, but any rate, I began listening to songs for more than just messages of, I think when I was in junior high school, I found talking to girls relatively difficult. That would not have been unusual, but one way that I could communicate was by selecting records, which by the way, was a great reason for collecting, taking them to parties, because, if you were in charge of the records, you knew what was coming up, and you knew which girl you were going to ask, and you could communicate simply by, "Okay, listen to this next one. That is really the way I feel." So I learned early on that music, in addition to being entertainment could be used in a proactive way. You could exchange information through music. You could take information from music, you could learn from music.

HK (00:35:02):
Take information from music, you could learn from music. While it had been teen concerns in junior high school and high school, by the time I got to college there were bigger concerns that were showing up in the pop music kit. As I was collecting the popular songs, I became aware that there was this whole new category, I call it "topical pop." And then at some point I began looking for songs with messages, looking for songs with " My daddy is president, what is your daddy?" I thought, "That is pretty huge." This is about Caroline Kennedy. So some of the early ones would have been political, but certainly by the time I was finishing my graduate work, a different aspect of music was coming in for comments in (19)69 and (19)70, as you had both the war and the perceived problem with drugs. If you recall, Vice President Agnew, as the spokesman for the Nixon administration, was frequently quoted as saying that music is one of the causes of the problems that we have right now. Songs glorifying drug use are in fact creating some of the drug problems that we have. And so there was a lot of effort in listing bad songs, like Puff the Magic Dragon is a drug song. My comment, my retort to that was, "Well, if Puff, the Magic Dragon is a drug song then and what about Fly Me to the Moon? Was Frank Sinatra on a drug trip? But what happened, working with a mentor, a professor at Adelfi University who had a clinical practice. George and I played basketball and we would chat. And when he said, "Hugo, I am working with some teenagers who have behavioral problems that include drugs, but I am really finding it difficult to kind of break through and find some common ground to begin therapy. I called him Dr. Stricker until after I got my PhD. So I said, "Dr. Stricker, have you thought about music as sort of a bridge where you might ask your client what does she think of a particular song? You might even play it and try?" And he said, "No." And I said, "Would you like me to put together some music for you such as White Rabbit by the Jefferson Airplane, et cetera?" And George said he would appreciate that. So I put together a little tape of some music that I thought might have the ability to get some reaction. And it was not just drug music. I remember another one that I used was Sky Pilot by the Animals, which (19)68, so that was a war-related song about a chaplain in the Air Force who sends people off to kill and they come back. And how does he reconcile that with, what is it, the seventh commandment, or the sixth, whichever one it is that is "Thou shall not kill." So it had a message that a teenager listening to that music might pick up on, and therefore there might be some basis for getting a conversation started. And that convinced me that there were others who felt that music had gone beyond simply entertaining. If the Vice President is claiming that music about suicides, music about the war, music about drugs, is in fact influencing, impacting, causing certain behaviors. As far as I know, there is no evidence to support that. So to make a long story short, I finished my coursework in 1970. I was a dissertation short of my doctorate, and I had found myself in a very narrow cognitive learning area. This was the dissertation that I took with me overseas. And once I got to Okinawa and then later Vietnam, I realized that there was nothing in this project that in any way held a kind of interest that would sustain me, that would cause me to work on it while I was in Asia. So I thought back to music, which I always carried with me, and which I found in Vietnam had perhaps even greater importance. And I wrote George, Dr. Stricker. I had a couple of questions. I said, "Dr. Stricker, do you think Adelphi University would accept a dissertation focusing on popular music and its impact on youth? And if the answer to that is yes, would you consider being my chair for this?" And while I was in Vietnam, I got a post order letter back and he said yes to both. And suddenly my world changed, because now there was an opportunity. I did not need a library because I was carrying so much of this with me. So it was more sit down and begin putting on paper one of these ideas. That would have been early 1970, and in October or November of 1972, just two years later, I completed what would be one of the earliest dissertations on looking at whether there was in fact any document [inaudible] relationship, especially causal relationship, between what was happening in youth culture and what was happening in popular music.

SM (00:41:24):
Wow.

HK (00:41:25):
The answer is no. No causal relationships that I could find, but this is where I came into the notion of an early warning system, that musical trends, something might be happening in California or somewhere else, and music would bring it to the attention of the East Coast. Surfing, California, Hawaii. But the Beach Boys brought an interest to surfing to the East Coast. I remember the early (19)60s being at Rehoboth and seeing a VW with a surfboard on top. There was no surfing ever in Rehoboth because the coastline was not appropriate. But the surfing culture, the straight hair for the girls, the baggies, et cetera, music brought that to the East Coast. All right, that legitimized, that caused me to look even more closely for songs that had messages, or songs that had political overtones, songs that were topical. And from 1970 on, I have really been listening for, collecting, categorizing, listing, putting it all together. This Vietnam project is just the most recent expression of all that.

SM (00:42:42):
It is unbelievable. I am going to look at this a second.

HK (00:42:54):
Before [inaudible] I was traveling whenever I could to see more of the world, but whether it was one or two or three hours a day, this was sufficient interest that I was able to write the dissertation in just over a year.

SM (00:43:09):
How long was the defense? I will not take that.

HK (00:43:14):
When I went back to Europe, with credentials now, I was not shy about using them. I was assigned to Ramstein in Germany for a couple of terms, and one of the first things I did was to go to the American Forces Radio station in Kaiserslautern, introduced myself and said, "Guys, I just finished a doctorate on pop music. Is there something we can do with this?" And that station had an obligation, I think, as most of the stations in Europe did, to create some provisional programming that could go out on American Forces Europe. So I met a DJ named Scott Trackson and Scott said, "Let us think about how we can do this." So we broke the dissertation up into 12 parts, called it, what was the name of the show? Not Rock Recollections, something like that. But we sat down and then he would interview me about some of the things that I had found out and then play the music. And then he would say, "Okay, Dr. Keesing, how do you think this worked?" It turned out to be 12 one-hour shows. They were aired throughout Europe. I got fan mail. "This is very interesting. How can we get hold of Dr. Keesing and how can we learn more about it?" AFN gave me a little plaque for my contributions. But then I did a short paper for, what was it, the Eastern Psychological Association somewhere in the mid-(19)70s. I was trying to establish credentials as a teacher and going to professional meetings. So I wrote a paper on youth in transition. I gave the paper at. A panel when it was over, the editor of a book came by and said, "I really like what you presented. Can I have it? I am about to publish a book and I would like to use it." I said, "Well, this was a paper." And he said, "No. If it is about this long..." Hold on, I will show you this. A month or two of having presented... Here we go. "The pop message: a trend analysis of the psychological content of two decades of music." All right, it was I presented a paper, a week later sent him a copy, and two months later, I have my first publication in the Book of Readings.

SM (00:46:12):
My God.

HK (00:46:15):
So all of this was reinforcement for the notion that music is important. Music and psychology and adolescent behavior and youth culture are a legitimate package. This is about (19)75 when for most traditional academics, pop culture and pop music were sort of throwaway. But I had a dissertation. I had a chapter in a book. I had a radio show. And so I felt as if I had a solid foundation for including music in my teachings and approaching the University of Maryland and suggesting something more formal. How can I build this into a course? First effort was in the honors program. It went over very well. And then again, sort of the fortuitous coming together, the father of popular culture studies in the US, a gentleman name Ray Brown was on a two-year sabbatical at the University of Maryland. He was at Bowling Green State in Ohio, came to Maryland. He was there. I knew Ray from professional meetings and I said, "Dr. Brown, can I get your support for creating a course at the University of Maryland that would really study contemporary American history using music as the main source?" And Ray thought that would be a great idea. And so I created something called American Studies 298a, popular music in American society. It began modestly in 1975 or (19)76 with 17 students in one class and 35 in the other. And in three years I had moved from a classroom to an auditorium that sat 300, where my average enrollment was 280 to 400 students. All of that sort of continued. First of all, it fed the need to stay current. So I began collecting Vietnam music and political music, Watergate, all of those records. Because I now had a formal way to bring them into my class. It meant that the books I used to teach were books on the (19)60s. One of my favorites... Here are my textbooks. Glory and the Dream.

SM (00:48:43):
Oh yeah, Glory and the Dream.

HK (00:48:43):
What are some of the others?

SM (00:48:49):
There is Todd Gitlin's book, I know you have got there.

HK (00:48:52):
His book is right here. A very interesting book, Year by Year in the [inaudible], which makes the connection between music and all of the events that were going on. And what is even better about this.

SM (00:49:17):
Wow, there is good. Wow, I never heard of this book.

HK (00:49:23):
Well, I have used this since then. When I have gone to concerts and I have gotten Everly Brothers. It is probably long, long out of print, but this would tell you news that influenced the rock era. statistics, what people were doing. And it begins exactly at your point where you are interested.

SM (00:49:45):
Right.

HK (00:49:46):
So this would definitely be one.

SM (00:49:49):
You might be able to find this on Amazon.

HK (00:49:52):
You could probably try it. Yeah.

SM (00:49:54):
I have this book.

HK (00:49:54):
But this is also why-

SM (00:49:56):
I have that one.

HK (00:49:57):
I tried to use books like this that would encourage students, that would use music as the primary tool, but that had everything about the culture surrounding it. This was, I think, the last text that I used.

SM (00:50:14):
Do you really believe as a person who studied music for decades, that the music of the (19)60s and say the (19)70s, through the mid (19)70s, more than any other period in our history, had more messages, gave more messages, and had an influence on the young people that were growing up in that era than any other era. I say this because even when you think of the World War II generation, you think of those songs like, oh, the White Cliffs of Dover.

HK (00:50:49):
Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.

SM (00:50:50):
Yeah. Or people are not coming home. There is messages about people who have died and are not coming back home. There were some messages in other music from the (19)40s, I believe, but not like this period.

HK (00:51:08):
I agree with you, and one of the reasons that I have spent so much time studying war music is because wartime brought more message music than any other time. I mean, there is still the songs of love and separation. But back in that room, I have got 11,000 pieces of sheet music related to World War II. That is my other huge interest. So I have 70 or 80 different monographs that I have put together on themes from World War II sheet Music. And when I began publishing on music and wartime, the first article was World War II and Vietnam. I wanted to see to what extent the messages were the same, were different. And in fact, the Vietnam War music is very different from the World War II-related music.

SM (00:52:16):
In what way?

HK (00:52:17):
Specifically, because the wars were so different, the music that is associated with Vietnam from the earliest point, which would be about 1960, (19)61, would be songs that were vaguely pacifist, such as Where Have All The Flowers Gone? I mean, it is not an anti-war tune, but it talks about the futility of war. Soldier Boy is about separation, but it is certainly not like You are a Sap Mr. Jap to Make the Yankee Cranky, or Remember Pearl Harbor. We sort of found we were in Vietnam for a bunch of years before there were any songs that really mentioned Vietnam. The first pop song that mentions Vietnam that I was able to run across is called The Big Draft by the Four Preps. And it is a comedy tune that where this group parodies The Platters in this case, and it says, "Our new records a bomb, they have never heard of us in South Vietnam." So South Vietnam was sort of an incidental point. World War II, you had songs about, I mean, there are hundreds of songs about the Japs, some of them extremely racist. Songs about Hitler. Songs about military units, about battles, about generals, lots of interesting music about the women in the service, the WACs, the WAVES, the SPARs, the Lady Marines who were all new. But I do not think I have in the sheet music of 11,000, more than two or three songs that could be considered critical of war or certainly nothing of World War II. I mean, there may have been, war is not a good thing, but nothing that was critical of US involvement in World War II. It was a righteous war. It was America had been attacked and the entire music industry and more so even the people at home, because maybe 80 percent, 75 or 80 percent of what I have there is music written by your average citizen. It is self-published. It is not by major publishers. It is not by Irving Berlin or Frank Lesser. It is people writing from the heart. Vietnam began with protest music, whether it was Universal Soldier of Buffy Sainte-Marie, whether it was Eve of Destruction by McGuire or PF Sloan. And from (19)65 on, you already had the beginning of a divisiveness, because after Eve of Destruction, you may remember there was an answer record called the Dawn of Correction by the Spokesmen refuting each point that McGuire made. And after Buffy Sainte-Marie's, the Universal Soldier, Jan Barry of Jan and Dean recorded the Universal Coward.

SM (00:55:38):
I think you mentioned that at your-

HK (00:55:40):
So you begin getting this tug-of-war music. War music became polarizing from very early on. And there was no polarity in World War II music. It was all strongly supportive of the US and every aspect of its effort. And it was uniformly critical of the Germans and the Italians and Japanese, et cetera. So World War II music, single focus, we are going to win this. We are going to achieve victory over the bad guys. Vietnam, from the onset, it was unclear why were we there? Where were we? Most people did not know where Vietnam was. What are we doing there? What are our objectives? Never clear. And the music that I associate with Vietnam from 1960, for 50 years, the music has been unable to clarify a war that was never clear. The arguments over were we right? Were we wrong? Did we lose? Did we win? They have not been settled.

SM (00:56:55):
Yeah. In fact, there has been a lot of albums made that are advertised in the Vietnam magazine that you can buy. People you have never heard of.

HK (00:57:05):
Well, you are going to hear of some of them.

SM (00:57:06):
Yeah.

HK (00:57:13):
I saw the ad for John Black in here.

SM (00:57:17):
Yes, John. Yes.

HK (00:57:18):
We have got, I think three of Black's cuts are on the box. And I said, "Look, we need to do something similar." And I was told that Vietnam Magazine will in fact, review our-

SM (00:57:33):
How about the people like the Chris Noel's, some of the singers that were there, or the women that were over there. I think Chris Noel, I am not sure if she did any songs. Oh my God, yeah, I met her.

HK (00:57:55):
Yep. And we include Forgotten Man.

SM (00:57:59):
Oh my gosh. I did not even know she did an album.

HK (00:58:01):
Is one of the ones on the box set. And we also have a 35 or 40 second clip of her date with Chris Show for American Forces Radio. So with Joe's permission or understanding, she is the only woman I think who is included on a disc of all veteran songs, because she was made in honorary Vietnam veterans.

SM (00:58:31):
Yes-yes.

HK (00:58:31):
So everything else is by men, but Chris Noel as an honorary vet, as the distinction of being the only woman with a song on one of the last two CDs.

SM (00:58:42):
How about the Native American, also, musicians? Bill Miller, I think he is a great Native American singer. Do you know Bill Miller?

HK (00:58:51):
I do not know Bill Miller. I have got one Native American, Jesse Nighthawk with a CD that is entirely Vietnam-oriented. It is a very powerful CD. I have passed along to Bear Family a request that maybe we put 30 seconds of some of the songs on Facebook so that people can listen to and get a sense of what they may be hearing. And for one of the CDs, we are looking at the possibility of one song from each CD. Jesse Nighthawk as the one that I want to feature on, I guess, CD 12, APO San Francisco Visits. It is just an extremely powerful song.

SM (00:59:42):
Buffy Sainte-Marie has got a new album out. I am trying to interview her. She has agreed to be interviewed, but she has to do it on computer. But she has got an unbelievable new album.

HK (00:59:54):
We are using her Universal Soldier. I had requested a second song, Moratorium, and for some reason we could not get licensing for that. So she will be included in the set.

SM (01:00:10):
And talking about the music during the time the Boomers have been alive and they are only hitting about 63 years old.

HK (01:00:17):
I am collecting Social Security.

SM (01:00:26):
Yeah, but you are young.

HK (01:00:28):
I am young. Okay.

SM (01:00:28):
Yeah. And what I found out in the interview process, that people that were born, Richie Havens was born in (19)40 or (19)41, considers himself a Boomer. He says, "That is my mentality."

HK (01:00:41):
Psychologically. And the culture, I am certainly [inaudible].


SM (01:00:44):
You are right in there. All right. What are your thoughts on, I am talking about the Boomer music now. Let us say we are into the (19)76 period now, disco. I know there is a brand-new book out by a professor at Rutgers University. She has just written a book on the history of disco, and I bought it. Ann Eccles is her name. It is supposed to be a very good book. What are your thoughts on the music from the disco, which seems to be the cutoff point, and then you get into the (19)80s and the (19)90s and today's music. This is all part of the Boomer generation, even though it is geared toward younger people, but disco's certainly part of that Boomer era.

HK (01:01:30):
Yeah. As an academic, I look for trans patterns. I think one of the important technological changes or events was when FM radio came to prominence in the late (19)50s, early (19)60s. The Payola hearings changed AM radio. I grew up with mobile disc jockeys who played whatever they wanted to. But by the late (19)50s, with Dick Clark, Alan Freed and others, the restrictions on what individual DJs could play were put in place. And you began to get formatted top 40. So beginning in the mid-(19)60s, the sound changed. And then with the advent of FM, you began getting what was then called alternative. So the top 40 were really the music that you heard in the mid-(19)50s until the mid-(19)60s. And then suddenly with FM albums and album-oriented artists and longer cuts could be played on the radio. I mean, The Doors-

SM (01:02:51):
Light My Fire.

HK (01:02:52):
Et cetera. Who were much more popular on FM and whose album cuts became better known than some of their singles. And so I was already a little bit beyond, because music was always a tool for me. And by (19)65, I had graduated from college, I was in graduate school, and music's importance to my life was changing. It became more a subject of interest, and sort of the currency the day in terms of where did you go? What did you listen to? What did you bring to parties? So FM music brought in new artists. It also brought in the themes because FM radio had more leeway in terms of what it played than AM. AM was more conservative. It was considered more for kids. The thoughtful late teenagers were now finding their FM stations and getting deep into Jimi Hendrix as opposed to the bubblegum music, for example, because bubblegum was a little bit before. I look at disco as sort of the in-motion bubblegum. Disco, the lyrics were not very heavy, but it was great for dancing. And music, whether it was Chubby Checkers and all of the Twist records in the early (19)60s, disco was simply the continuation of one musical strand, which is, if you ever watched Dick Clark or American Bandstand, the records were rated: "It is got a good beat. You can dance to it. I will give it an 85." So for some listeners, music was primarily about does it have a good beat and can you dance to it? They were less concerned with the lyrics than could they dance to it. And that reminds me of American Forces, AFN, banned Eve of Destruction. And there were some articles on Eve of Destruction that came out in the late (19)60s trying to prove that music like this ought to be banned because it was anti-American and it was bad influence. And one of the studies on Eve of Destruction found that most teens did not have a clue as to what the song was about. They would listen to it and say, "You cannot really dance to it. I do not like it because I cannot dance to it," when asked, "Well, what are the politics? What is the message?" So a lot of kids did not listen for messages in music. It is more a visceral experience. I was one of those who was less interested in the beat and more interested in the learning.

SM (01:05:44):
Did you see this in your studies, that this was changing as you get into the late (19)60s and say through 1973, because I consider the (19)70, (19)71, (19)72, (19)73, all part of the (19)60s. I listened to the words, I wanted to hear the words. And what upset me is when I could not hear the words.

HK (01:06:07):
FM music was more attuned to letting you listen to an entire track, or maybe even playing an entire side of an album. And so the ability to go beyond the two and a half minutes of vigorous exercise, i.e. dancing, FM allowed you to do that. People my age began buying albums probably in the early (19)60s. Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul, and Mary, those were album artists. But the currency, I like to use that term, was still primarily singles. If you were 14, 15, 16, and you did not have 3.98 or 4.98 to buy an album necessarily, besides many albums were simply greatest hits where you got all the singles and flip sides. And so until the Beatles began creating albums for themselves, it was more than just a collection of songs. That is to say that younger kids were still primarily into 45s. And 45s, certainly the pop 45s rarely had much of a message. Now, what I have subsequently learned is that virtually all of the message music from the 60s and early (19)70s is country or folk. Folk, usually on LPs, cuts by Joan Baez, by Tom Paxton, by Phil Oaks, by Buffy Sainte-Marie, and people like that. Or if they are Country and Western, it is singles, obscure labels distributed out of Nashville, stuff that probably never sold. But these were people who felt strongly enough to put their words into song, maybe print a hundred records, and that was the last you ever heard of it. But some of the most interesting Vietnam stuff is from those Country and Western singles that came out between early (19)60s to early (19)70s.

SM (01:08:18):
Yeah, I tell you that Arlo Guthrie too, his music, Alice's restaurant.

HK (01:08:25):
That there was an Alice's Restaurant Massacre, which came out as a single, maybe four and a half minutes. But to appreciate that you have to listen to the 16 or 17 minute album cut. You cannot get that.

SM (01:08:37):
Yeah. And the first time you listened to it, because he performed at my alma mater. I saw him twice.

HK (01:08:45):
I heard him do it in Forest Hills at the tennis stadium in (19)68 or (19)69, somewhere around there. He was just sitting there and strumming away.

SM (01:08:58):
As the Boomer generation's getting older, in terms of the late (19)70s and the year of Ronald Reagan and the (19)80s. And the (19)80s had really good music. I liked the music of the (19)80s, but it seemed like there was a return of a lot of solo artists at that time. When I think of the (19)80s, I think of those MTVs, watching them on MTV, which was a great way of watching the music and getting to know the songs. But groups like Air Supply, Police.

HK (01:09:29):
Journey.

SM (01:09:29):
Duran Duran.

HK (01:09:31):
REO Speed wagon.

SM (01:09:35):
Yeah, but I thought it was great music. Steve Perry.

HK (01:09:38):
Oh yeah.

SM (01:09:38):
Oh Sherrie.

HK (01:09:39):
Oh Sherrie.

SM (01:09:40):
Yeah. But to me, it seemed like it was almost like a return to the (19)50s. It was not a whole lot of messages, but just really good music. Just a lot of solo artists, African American and white, male and female.

HK (01:09:56):
But beginning with the first divide between AM and FM, and that is...

HK (01:10:02):
And FM, and that is mid (19)60s, mid to late (19)60s. I mean, in the (19)50s, I think virtually every teenager was listening to the same body of music. By the mid to late (19)60s, you began to find the purchases between album-oriented listeners and those who were still listening to singles and singles became teen bopper music. Bobby Sherman, and David Cat. And music like that. So album...

SM (01:10:41):
Mark Wansey was another one.

HK (01:10:44):
Paul Revere and the Raiders. Albums offered more potential for becoming creative. For, I mean, the Beatles were certainly the ones that helped move that along. And so people began creating niches that black music, soul music, R&B and-and Rock and Roll were, except at least in Washington, were synonymous that DJs had listened to, played Little Richard and played Fat [inaudible], played Chuck Barry, et cetera. Now, if you were in the South, maybe you did not hear them. Maybe segregated, their first segregated radio stations boom and the youth culture of the mid-(19)50s put an end to that because kids, once they found out that Little Richard really sang Long Paul Sally, and that it was much better than Pat Boon's version, simply would not accept a station that would only play the white versions, the cover versions. So teenagers made clear that they wanted their rock and roll in its original form, and by its original artist. By the mid-(19)60s, James Brown is helping to take black music a step further. Motown was music by blacks for a broad audience. And some would argue that Motown was too white, even though the artists were black. But the music represented by James Brown, and then later on Funk, these were very clearly aimed at a black urban audience. And while white kids enjoyed much of that music as well, the specialization of musical styles began. I mean, disco. Disco was not just the twist, but disco became a musical style with a culture that went with it, with the leisure suit and Discos and John Travolta.

SM (01:12:43):
Some people say it was gay culture. Some people think, well, I read that in Anne Eckle's book.

HK (01:12:49):
Yeah, yeah. Perhaps it is...

SM (01:12:54):
Saturday Night Fever, yeah.

HK (01:12:56):
But you did not have to be gay to enjoy disco. I mean, if disco was embraced by gays, that is one thing. But to say that everybody who listened, enjoyed disco was somehow gay. I think that that, that is turning that thing upside.

SM (01:13:09):
Bee Gees. That is unbelievable. I love the Bee Gees.

HK (01:13:12):
Yep. But with disco, you also got an emphasis on what electronics drummers now had electronic drum sets, synthesizers. So there was an emphasis on production. Again, Phil Spector songs, I liked them because the wall of sound. By the late (19)60s and early (19)70s, David Foster, one of the reasons I like Steve Perry and Journey is because there is the big orchestration behind it. And so you and I like that music. Others felt that that was way overblown, and were looking for the stripped down music. I mean, take all of that fancy electronic stuff out. Just give me a guitar. It took a while longer, but artists like Eric Clapton became popular again, but unplugged. In other words, you liked, some people liked him when in the electric versions and others, none of them. I did not like him until I heard him unplugged. This was the reverse, what was it, (19)65? When Dylan went to Newport and folk music went from acoustic to electric. The purists were offended, but we would not have had The Birds and The Turtles and The Lovin' Spoonful if Dylan had not done that. And so what? A decade, decade and a half later, it is all right, let us get back to the basics. So by the late (19)70s, mid (19)70s, to me, music had fractured. There were still Casey Case in the American Top 40, and for many people, that was still the way to know what was what. But there were an awful lot of artists whose records did not make Top 40, who became tremendously influential. I mean Led Zeppelin. But how many records did they have that made Top 40? Stairway to Heaven never made the top 100, and yet I was looking at this for each of my classes, Maryland, I would ask my students, okay, what are your top three rock and roll songs? And I have this information from the (19)70s on. The biggest ones were Stairway to Heaven, a Free Bird, and Amy by Pure Prairie League. There were a couple overs, some Springsteen, Born to Run. Did that make it as a single?

SM (01:15:54):
No, I do not think the Grateful Dead ever had singles. Did they? No.

HK (01:15:57):
Touch of Gray. Grateful Dead, Springsteen, Billy Joel's early stuff did not come out of singles. But these were the mid-(19)70s artists. I mean, the popular ones. I call them the ABCDs. You had Aba, you know, B was Red, C was The Carpenters. D was John Denver. A was The Eagles. These were the people who were selling singles. But it was Springsteen, Joel, Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, The Who, who were selling huge amounts of music, but not AM top four.

SM (01:16:37):
When I think of the period from the disco period, because I was working at Ohio University in my very first job, Berry White was so big.

HK (01:16:47):
Oh, yes. Wonderful.

SM (01:16:49):
And I do not care, even though I am from the (19)60s from that period and everything, let the music play. Just when I first heard that, I said, let the music play. It just made you feel good. And I thought he was a genius. And then Donna Summer.

HK (01:17:05):
Donna Summer.

SM (01:17:05):
Because when she sang that song that they would not play on the radio the full version, Love to Love You Baby, to me... Yeah, Donna Summer and Barry White to me were the stars of that... The epitome. Then there was the one female singer, I forget her name, African American who was sang, had a couple big hits too, but they kind of stood out amongst all the others.

HK (01:17:32):
I have always appreciated a big voice. I have always appreciated orchestration. I mean Laura Branigan.

SM (01:17:42):
Oh, she was good.

HK (01:17:44):
Good?

SM (01:17:44):
Yes.

HK (01:17:44):
Yeah, I was delighted when Barry White had his career revived by Ally McBeal, and it was wonderful to hear his music there. But I mean, you and I clearly have overlapping tastes, but we can find people our age, well, maybe not, maybe a couple years younger, who were into punk. Who were listening to the Sex Pistols and The Ramones.

SM (01:18:16):
Never got into that.

HK (01:18:17):
Me neither. But those are subsets of our generation, or at least the boomer generation who found their music and whose recollections of the roles music played, et cetera, would be very different from ours.

SM (01:18:32):
Do you believe, particularly in the (19)90s, we had Chuck D in our campus. I like Chuck D because he was pretty critical of these other rap artists, and he has been, Tupac Shakur and some of the heroes of the (19)90s. Some of them lost their lives, Big Daddy and everything, but that the critics of that music were boomers, a lot of them, who were older. But if they really tried to understand the music a little better, was not a lot of that music about messages too?

HK (01:19:03):
Yeah.

SM (01:19:03):
It is just that you could not hear it because there was so much. And of course, today, the way they treat women and all the other things, you can dislike the music, but the messages are there.

HK (01:19:15):
The messages, to me, it is still a barometer. The barometer right now is for, we indicate as society where, what is the word? It is to my ears, much less civil. It is much more confrontational, in your face. It is loud. And we were, at this point a long time ago, I grew up in a family and in an environment that prize diplomacy, compromise, quiet. I mean, you go about do your business but do not... Rather than 15 minutes and bearing your guts for Oprah or something like that. That is not the way I learned what it was like to become an adult. And so many of the qualities that have been important to me for more than 60 years are not the antithesis, but certainly they are at the other end of the spectrum for what is important now. Now music has, I think, always pulled young people, has pulled listeners from sort of the safe and to a little bit more daring. And whether it was The Flappers and jazz in the thirties, for example, because my mom told me she was born in 1910 and how excited she was when jazz was introduced to Holland and her parents' generation frown on what these young women were doing, wearing lipstick in dances like The Charleston. That is the end of the civilization as we know it. And in the forties, the big bands, there were people who said, "no, we do not want our kids dancing to music sung by some skinny kid named Sinatra." So yeah, I think there is always some tendency for young people to break away from the norms, find something new. It is simply to find something new these days, you have to become more and more extreme. You are pushed more and more to the fringes, as far as I am concerned.

SM (01:21:41):
In the love of music as a person who grew up around the same time I did. Did you also, not only during those times when the singers that we have been talking about in the late (19)50s or the (19)50s, and then of course the rock musicians of the (19)60s, but there were other songs that had messages that may have been called corny, like MacArthur Park? I thought Richard Harris's version of MacArthur Park, I like the words. "MacArthur Park is mounting in the dark.? There is a message in there. There is a song.

HK (01:22:16):
There is.

SM (01:22:18):
And I always think of times when I went with my parents to parks when my parents are gone.

HK (01:22:24):
But you are also aware that that song has been consistently voted but the worst rock record of all time.

SM (01:22:30):
I did not know that.

HK (01:22:31):
Yeah, yeah. And Richard Harris's version, because the Donna Summer version gives it a little bit more life, but "left a cake out in the rain?" I mean, what the hell was he talking about?

SM (01:22:41):
Yeah but the guy who wrote that was, what is his name? He was actually said... Jim Webb.

HK (01:22:45):
Jim Webb.

SM (01:22:46):
Yeah. And I had his album.

HK (01:22:48):
Who also wrote some very good stuff.

SM (01:22:50):
Do you have his album of Jim Webb sings Jim Webb?

HK (01:22:54):
If I did, it is at Maryland.

SM (01:22:56):
It was an orange cover and it did not sell very much. And all I know is, but a lot of the songs, Simon and Garfunkel's music was just full of messages from Bookends, "Old friends. Old friends sitting on park benches like bookends." And of course, even the movies of that era always had theme songs. I remember Liza Minelli and Wendell Burton in the movie... I forget, but the song was, Come Saturday Morning.

HK (01:23:28):
One Flew Up the Coop Nest.

SM (01:23:31):
Yeah, yeah. "It Comes Saturday."

HK (01:23:32):
No-no, not One Flew up the Coop...

SM (01:23:34):
No, that is Jack Nicholson. Sterile Cuckoo.

HK (01:23:38):
Sterile Cuckoo. The cuckoo part I remembered. I just got the wrong...

SM (01:23:40):
That is real (19)60s because she is off at college falling in love with the Wendell Burton. But that song is "here come Saturday." I always remember that. So there is...

HK (01:23:50):
One of the qualities of getting older is the willingness to take the time to become more reflective. I mean, Simon and Garfunkel, I listened to them in the (19)60s and (19)70s, but it was not music that you would take to a party. To a frat party, for example.

SM (01:24:11):
Right.

HK (01:24:12):
The songs I took to frat parties were Ray Charles, what did I say? Or the Isley Brothers, Shout. Or The Contours, Do You Love Me? Because even in college, I had taken my records with me and I was invited to take them to parties.

SM (01:24:25):
Well, I know one. I had a very nice record collection at Ohio State when I was there. And I remember one album that some of my friends wanted when they were having a date one night with a girl was Shirley Bassey, I Capricorn.

HK (01:24:44):
Okay. See that is not something, and there was music you played when you were smoking pot. There was music that you played when you were studying for exams. Certainly the people around me used music. But again, by the mid (19)60s already, there were now so many choices that you could look for, find, adapt music to whatever you wanted to do. In the early (19)50s, we did not have that. We simply had what AM radio was playing and or what you could buy at 45s. I think I got my first LP for Christmas, probably around 19.

SM (01:25:35):
There was an article that I just recently read, and you may have seen it. And actually, if you go into the computer when you go into your name, you are in that article.

HK (01:25:46):
That is interesting.

SM (01:25:46):
But in the article, it says Kent State is part of the culture wars. When people say that Kent State is part of the culture wars, what do you think they are saying?

HK (01:26:10):
The culture wars in Kent State. Okay. I would go back to initially to a book that James Michener wrote on Kent State in 19... actually it came out (19)71, called "Kent State, What Happened." What was frightening, [inaudible], was the reactions that he got in Kent, Ohio and in the whole state. When his researchers asked people about the events there in May of 1970, there are some things I recall from the book. He talks about protestors at, I think Sandy Shroyer's funeral carrying signs saying "the Kent State four should have studied more" carrying protest signs at funerals. I thought was only that Baptist route out of Oklahoma that did that these days. But this is back in 1970. I used a quote from Michener's book in the set where one of his researchers is now talking to a woman from Kent, Ohio who has three sons who attended the university, who worked as students there. Makes the most sense to [inaudible] about the right place here. But I quoted in the book... All right, so he said, "more than the usual care was taken to get it exactly as deliberate, mother. Anyone who appears in the streets of a city like Kent with long hair, dirty clothes were barefooted deserves to be shot. Researcher, I have your permission to quote that? Yes, you sure do. It would have been better if the guard had shopped a whole lot of them that morning. But you had three sons there. Mother, if they did not do what the guards told them, they should have been mowed down. Professor of psychology listening in saying, is long hair justification for shooting someone? Yes, we have got to clean up this nation and we will start with the long hairs. Professor, would you prevent one of yourselves to be shot simply because he went barefooted. And she says, yes. Where do you get such ideas? And she says, teach at the local high school. Professor Union, you are teaching your students such things. Yes. I teach them the truth. That the lazy, the dirty, the ones you see walking in the streets and doing nothing, ought all to be shot."

SM (01:28:33):
Wow.

HK (01:28:34):
Kent, Ohio. 1970. I was following in the Aron Beacon Journal last month, some of the conversations, meetings with the blogs, why does Kent State bother to make this into a big event? I mean, these kids were protesting. Right on. Why are they setting up a special commemorative center, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Those grounds are now what? They have been officially designated a historic site. And there are people who feel very strongly that all of this is wrong. These kids were protesting the war. They were anti-American. So if that fits your definition of a culture war, the differences in opinion that were so evident in that interview in 1970, those differences still exist. And that culture war still exists. It is simply expressed in blogs now. There was somebody in an article that, I do not remember quite how the connection was made, but somebody tried to connect what happened at Kent State in May of 1970 with what happened in New York in September of 2001. And there were people who took loud exception of that. That one was a terrorist attack on the US and the other was a bunch of disgruntled kids. In other words, the politics, the different world viewpoints, et cetera. In that sense, little has changed in 40 years.

SM (01:30:31):
And I have here that, and I think this is also what is really happening on university campuses today, that controversy can be seen as economically damaging. And Kent State is box office poison. And this was the article I was reading. Because that movie that came out in (19)81 did not succeed, but it was not very well made either on Kent State. But the question I am really asking is if Kent State is symbolic of something that was controversial, like the anti-war movement, what is that saying about, have we learned anything from that period of today? Because if universities are still afraid of controversy, and we know that universities and all colleges are having a tough time now because of the economy we are living in, the world we are living in today, and that if everything is bottom line, the university is a business, but the students of the (19)60s were really challenging the university. That the university is about ideas. It is about preparing students of the world they are going to face. To listening to all points of view that we do not do things for the sake of controversy, but things can be controversial. Had the universities learned anything from what happened in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s and the tragedies that took place on campus?

HK (01:32:27):
Wow, there certainly is not an easy answer for that. First of all, again, the term universities has to cover so many different institutions and they range from the liberal to extremely conservative. I would not compare the University of Wisconsin to Bob Jones University.

SM (01:32:48):
Or Hillsdale College.

HK (01:32:55):
I think that there is... Technology to me makes change that the things that happen on campus are now reported so quickly with a professor says something that is controversial, and it could be a blog within minutes. I mean, somebody could be texting from the classroom. It is picked up and suddenly it is not a difference of opinion between a student and a professor. But it now becomes a point for a talking head on television late in the evening, professor so-and-so said such and such. The next thing you have got a controversy. I think it is much more difficult. I have not been in a college classroom. I was teaching as late as 2006, but when you are teaching for the Department of Defense, you have got a very different environment. I was teaching graduate courses in intelligence analysis. That is a little different than teaching psychology and undergraduate. So in my American studies course, there were times when my presentations of, let us say World War II or Vietnam, were students discrete. I did not see that necessarily as a problem because if they all sit there nodding their heads, you wonder what is happening. And I learned a lot more about what my students were learning when they disagreed or asked questions because then we had to elaborate on our positions. I do not know if faculty today feel more constrained. I think students feel a right to hold faculty accountable. I think that is a (19)70s, post (19)70s phenomenon. As an undergraduate, I would not have questioned a grade that a faculty member gave me unless it was so egregious. But I certainly had a number of students who came and complained about a grade. And in some cases, this would have been in the mid to late (19)80s where parents began to intervene on behalf of their students. That now is a fairly regular phenomenon where you have got the helicopter parents who email a professor and say, how come my kid only got a B or a C? I personally would have trouble dealing with that. I taught one class, I guess this would have been fairly early. It was not, not the entire class was online, but a couple of the sessions. But I have got colleagues who teach online courses where students will complain to a dean if their emails are not answered within an hour. Well, folks, if I were a teacher and I had 300 students and I had computer students who all wanted an answer to a question in the next hour, I would tell them, sorry, this is not going to happen. But these are colleagues who are full-time workers who teach the evenings. And one of the reasons why I do not teach at the University of Maryland anymore is because I said, no, I do not want to work under those kinds of circumstances. Students are welcome to ask questions to interact, disagree, but my concept of the role of a faculty member is based on, my dad was a professor at the University of Amsterdam. Now, when he lectured, he came in academic regalia and his students stood up when he came in. I do not know if they asked questions, but he would present his lecture and he would walk out and they would stand up again. Those days are long gone. Imagine standing in front of a class and for theater, 300 students, and a student comes in behind me, stands in front of me and says, Dr. Keesing, can you tell me what I have missed? The student came in ten minutes late and I simply said, I would suggest that you sit down now. The idea that I am more important than these other 299 students. I want you to deal with my needs first. I simply would not tolerate that and I did not. And so by 80s standards, I was a hard ass. I do not know whether I would survive in the year 2010.

SM (01:38:01):
The students of the (19)60s certainly challenged a lot of the... They would challenge speakers and sometimes shot them down, which was wrong. I think they had learned that was wrong.

HK (01:38:22):
Freedom of speech means you say what you want to, but you also let others. In other words it is the notion that it is okay for me, but it is not okay for you. That is misinterpreting the whole notion of academic freedom. I do not recall ever consciously staying away from a topic because I felt it would be controversial. In fact, early on, it would be quite the opposite to that. I think I have mentioned that I was in Vietnam in 1970, teaching psychology for the University of Maryland. I was a young kid. I was what, 26 years old. I had long hair, sideburns. I was fresh off college campus. And six months after Kent State, I was teaching the troops in Vietnam. One of the classes I taught was social psychology, and one of the blocks that I was determined to teach, and I did, was the block on authoritarianism. And what was his name? I was taking a look at his just last night... But the studies on blind obedience where a figure in authority can tell somebody else, you must do this. And then, yeah, why would you do it? Because I was just following orders. I thought, we were in Vietnam. I have got soldiers. And the question that I posed, and I had pilots in class who flew F4 bombing strikes over the north. I said, what you need to do, what I want you to do, is think about what happens if the US were to lose this war, and you were on the wrong side. You were taken prisoner, and you are now brought into a court of inquiry and you were asked to justify why you dropped bombs on Hanoi. Well, those are my orders. And I said, and what happened to the German officers in Nurnberg when they said they were just following orders? This was not the kind of question that my students wanted me to ask, or one that they wanted to think about. This is 1970, there are pilots who have not wanted to really think about that 35 or 40 years later. But to me, that was part of my responsibility as a teacher. That we are not here just to have a good time. I am teaching psychology and this is something that I required them to address at the time in the world. What if we end up being on the wrong side, the losing side, and you have to justify your actions. What are you going to say? How are you going to do it? So to me, that was a requirement of teaching. You challenge. You make students think. If it makes them uncomfortable, then you are more likely to be doing something that is important and useful than if they can just sit back and, oh yeah, this is going to be fun to me that was not teaching.

SM (01:41:55):
I had professors like that too, and that was good. Can I need your restroom? Just real fast?

HK (01:42:04):
It is up the stairs... All right, here we go. Music is the soundtrack of my life. So I can give you what was popular in all the reference points.

SM (01:42:13):
Well, I have a question here which I wanted to ask, which is, in recent years, actors in Hollywood and other entertainers have been really heavily criticized for making political commentaries on whether it be our involvement in the Iraq War, even back in the Gulf War, or things that are happening in certain administrations. I mentioned Susan Saron and Tim Robins are just two of the examples. Jane Fonda, from back in the (19)60s period. And so a lot of people say to these people in the entertainment business, stay in the entertainment business. So thus, I had to ask this question, what about the musicians? And because musicians can write beautiful music, but you might have heard this question before, they should just be entertainers and not be political commentators.

HK (01:43:11):
The question or that particular view needs to be properly couched and that is that entertainers become the focus of this criticism if the position they take is the opposite of what the people criticizing feel it should be. So was John Wayne ever criticized widely for his stance in Vietnam? I do not think so, because Wayne was pro-America. Do you remember the film, The Green Berets? So was it wrong? Is it wrong for movie stars to become political? Only if the political side that they are espousing happens to be different from the one you feel is important? I do not think that liberal students or common students, I do not know how many boycotted to John Wayne films because of his US involvement in Vietnam stance. Jane Fonda for her 1972 trip to Hanoi is still vilified by a lot of Vietnam vets. If you were in the mall and you saw, not the Park Service Pavilion, but the one that is right there by the Lincoln Memorial Lab, that is run by vets, there are still Jane Fond urinal stickers. That are on sale there. So Fonda was against the war, therefore, she was a politician who was speaking up where she should not have been. Wayne and others were for the war. They were not subject to the same criticism, at least not from those same sources. Again... at least not from those same sources. Again, if there were anti-war students who boycotted Bob Hope or Joey Heatherton, or any of the entertainers who went to Vietnam, for example, as part of USO shows, I am not aware of it. Were they all political? Maybe, maybe not. I mean, Wayne certainly was, it very clear on where he stood. As far as I know, that was never a problem.

SM (01:45:31):
I know at the very end of his life, he was invited to Harvard for the Pudding-

HK (01:45:37):
The Hasty Pudding?

SM (01:45:38):
Yeah, and they were against him.

HK (01:45:40):
Okay.

SM (01:45:40):
Yeah and I know that. But he had a good time there, and that showed the Harvard students were a little advanced because they were willing to bring him in, and they had a great time. But they criticized him, but he was who he was, and they were who they were, and they got along fine.

HK (01:45:59):
That is the point, respect. Expect that there will be differences, and then respect those differences. That not everyone has to think the same way I do, it would be a dreadfully dull world if everyone agreed with you. And it would be difficult to have interesting conversations. But you can respectfully agree to disagree. It does not involve shouting. It does not need to involve confrontation. I disagreed with the war. I remember spending a moratorium day in New York City, listening to Peter, Paul and Mary, walking up Fifth Avenue with Shirley MacLaine, ending our walk at the UN building where the cast of Hair sang "Aquarius, Let the Sunshine In." So that must have been October 1969. But I was prepared to go to Vietnam. It was a war I disagreed with. I had no antipathy toward soldiers. My own thought was, "I can be more effective teaching and getting across my views of war and obedience, et cetera, as in the example I mentioned, in Vietnam, than standing and shouting and being in the US and protesting." So it was a conscious decision. I knew when I signed up at the University of Maryland that a condition of employment was that I would teach at least one turn in Vietnam. And it took getting my head together. But I said, "All right, I will be there to teach, not to proselytize." My hair was long. I found myself in a confrontation the second day I was at the base where I was stationed. I was in the officer's club, I had just had dinner. I was confronted by a pilot who had had too much to drink, and he walked up to me and sort of in my face, said, "What do you think you are doing here, [inaudible 01:48:28]?" And I said, "Sir, I am having dinner." " What is that shit on your face?" And I said, "Oh, I guess you are referring to my sideburns." Tried to deescalate, if you will. And before it could get nasty, I mean, this whole group had gathered around us. And at some point, the group parts and the base commander, bird colonel comes walking over and says, "What is the problem here?" And I said, "No problem, sir." And it broke up very quickly. But the next morning, I was called into the education center, and my boss there, the education advisor said, "People understand you were in a fight last night." And I said, "Oh yeah." "Well, was there trouble at the officer club?" And I said, "I would not characterize it as that, but this is what happened." She says, "Well, I got word from General Clay, head of the Air Force in Saigon, and he has instructed me to tell you that you have got to get your hair cut, shave off your side burns." And I said, "No, ma'am. I cannot believe that that is the case." Said, "Well, I want you to cut your hair." And I said, "Well, let me think about it." So I had not even taught my first class yet. That evening, I walked into my classroom for the first time with my roster, my helmet, and my flak vest, which had been issued at the same time. The first thing that came up was, "Mr. Keesing, do not get your hair cut." What is this all about? Something happened the night before, have not even met these students, but this is a small base and there were not many civilians. The first thing my students said was, "Do not get your hair cut." Because I represented the outside coming in and I guess the antithesis of the authority, and they were on my side. I had not even opened a book yet. So I was conflicted, but I did not, I did not go and get my hair cut short or shave my sideburns off, and I have got plenty of photos to prove that. Again, to make a long story short, four months later, I had taught what I thought were a couple of really good classes. As I am walking from the post office back to my trailer across this open field, there is an officer coming my way and he is wearing eagles. So as we pass, he stops and says, "Are you Mr. Keesing by any chance?" And I said, "Yes, sir." He came over and he reached out and he said, "I just want to tell you, I have heard nothing good things about your teaching." To me that was justification.

SM (01:51:27):
Wow.

HK (01:51:27):
In other words, it may have taken four months, but there were a sufficient number of people who had gotten beyond the haircut and the sideburns and who were aware of what was going on in the classroom. So that this colonel, and I very much appreciated him at that point, said, "I have heard nothing but good things about your teaching." Because that is what I was there for, not to be a one-man protest. So that really made-

SM (01:51:54):
Great story.

HK (01:51:55):
A huge difference for me. In terms of confidence, and I am doing this the right way. Not being easy, not staying away from subjects, not sort of hiding behind words, but teaching is challenging, confronting, getting people's heads involved.

SM (01:52:15):
Yeah.

HK (01:52:15):
It was a great place to have to do that and to get, as it turns out, positive reinforcement.

SM (01:52:21):
That is a great story.

HK (01:52:24):
It is certainly one I will remember.

SM (01:52:25):
Yeah. That is a great learning lesson too. These are just quick responses. What do you think are the greatest anti-war musicians, in your opinion?

HK (01:52:38):
During the time of the war?

SM (01:52:39):
Yeah. I am basically referring to the time when boomers were young, which could be any time even in the (19)50s. So I am talking about the (19)50s, (19)60s and (19)70s, basically.

HK (01:52:51):
The most powerful songs were people like Phil Ochs.

SM (01:52:57):
Yep.

HK (01:52:57):
Tom Paxton, Seeger. They were the folkies. They were not the most popular, but when you listened to some of the Phil Ochs songs, for example, the messages are very, very clear. The most powerful voices now are the vets who are writing about the battles that they fought, the buddies who were killed, the problems that they have had. Again, I am quite well-informed about World War II music and I have not run across a single World War II song by a veteran that says anything. I mean, they just do not exist. Vets of World War II did not write music, did not express themselves in music. So this is a completely new phenomenon. Same thing true for Korea. The popular artists who are best remembered are probably Creedence Clearwater, Fortunate Son, Run Through the Jungle, Who Will Stop the Rain. A series of songs by Crosby, Stills and Nash with Young, including Ohio, Teach Your Children, Find the Cost of Freedom. These were a little bit later. These were early (19)70s songs. Who would have a body of music? I mean, as we move up from the early (19)70s to in the (19)80s, people will associate Springsteen with, whether it is "Born in the USA", his remake of "War." Springsteen, has at least a half dozen or so songs which are relevant to the Vietnam generation of boomers. Although Springsteen may be a little bit post war. Joan Baez has a few Vietnam related songs, but she is more closely identified with civil rights. Peter, Paul, and Mary were involved in every social concern of the (19)60s. So they have, again, folk music, folk artists that there were not many pop artists who did not have any significant body of work that relates to John Lennon, obviously.

SM (01:55:48):
Right. "Imagine."

HK (01:55:50):
"Give Peace a Chance", "Happy Xmas (War is Over). And some Beatles songs have been associated with Vietnam. But I think that that is a bit tenuous. Was "Revolution" about Vietnam? No. Could you apply it to Vietnam? Maybe.

SM (01:56:13):
This leads me right into civil rights.

HK (01:56:18):
Okay.

SM (01:56:18):
The singers that you felt were the best in this area. You have mentioned Joan Baez. Would Nina Simone being there too?

HK (01:56:28):
Nina Simone was certain a voice for Blacks. But I do not think Nina Simone had a very high profile, let us see, on college campuses. And a lot of the folk oriented, whether it was Peter, Paul, and Mary, the Limeliters, I mean, folk groups like that sold albums because they were popular on campus. Nina Simone, a powerful voice, but not one that would be quickly associated with. James Brown had some very strong language. "Say out loud, I am black and I am proud." But again, civil rights, I think Joan Baez, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Pete Seeger, these were the people that you saw at demonstrations. These are the people whose voices, whose songs were sung.

SM (01:57:32):
Mahalia Jackson, would she be in there too? She was at the March on Washington. She was the female singer.

HK (01:57:38):
She was, and this may be where my perspective is too narrow. I was on campus and I saw civil rights primarily through the lenses of a student on a college campus. And therefore, I not only saw it through those lenses, I heard it primarily through college campuses. And as I said, Duke was at that point, a very traditional southern school. So while people in the room next door were playing Peter, Paul, and Mary, I do not recall ever hearing Mahalia Jackson or Nina Simone being played by anyone in my dorm or my fraternity house. So I have got to be careful to say they were not seminal musical figures within my sphere at that time.

SM (01:58:37):
I think a group that was very popular, because I know I saw them in 1966, was Little Anthony and the Imperials. And they were singing on white campuses, predominantly white. And back then, of course the lead singer had an unbelievable voice.

HK (01:58:50):
But Little Anthony, I do not know any songs that he recorded or sang in concerts that would have any civil rights overtones that could be considered in any way political. There was "Tears on My Pillow", "Shimmy Coco Bop." Good songs, but not ones that would-

SM (01:59:17):
Right.

HK (01:59:20):
The Limeliters or the Four Preps. I mention them because they sang about Vietnam in a humorous way. So there was a political message, but it was couched in such a way that you could choose to ignore it. You could enjoy the music without being caught up in the politics.

SM (01:59:40):
How about Diana Ross when she originally split from the-

HK (01:59:43):
Supremes?

SM (01:59:44):
Supremes and she "Ain't No Mountain High" enough. I mean, I love the words in that, and I was trying to figure if there was any meaning in the "Ain't no mountain high." Of course, that is the song that everybody identifies with her when she first made the split. And the other group that was very popular in college campus, the Chambers Brothers. And they are the time-

HK (02:00:02):
"Time has come today."

SM (02:00:04):
Time. Unbelievable. They were big.

HK (02:00:09):
That is post my experience. And I come back to the notion that if there is, beginning in the late (19)60s, there was a much greater ability to self-select. In other words, who were you going to listen to? You were not limited to a single one or 2:00 AM stations. College campuses was still a fairly homogeneous group of artists who were being invited because they were selling tickets. But I guess it would depend on what campus you were on. Duke was not a coffee house. So we had the Serendipity Singers, we had a couple of black groups, The Chiffons, but I do not recall any music. I graduated in (19)65, that had political overtones. Now I think that could well have begun changing. That is a difference. Let us say between a Bill Cosby and a Dick Gregory to Black comedians, artists. You would get a very different experience depending on which of those two would appear on your college campus. Duke would have been much more inclined to have a Bill Cosby, I think, than I think Gregory, at least at that point. Now, it was also amazing. My first time back after graduation was 1970. And I went to the maternity house and where five years earlier it had been beer and whatever you bought at the ABC store, it was mostly pot. In five years, the cultural climate had changed tremendously. A year later, the fraternity went off campus. Because the national did not allow them to pledge blacks. It was a fraternity with southern roots. And so that particular group decided that if we cannot invite anyone we want, then we will distribute themselves from the next. So Duke went through some very, very big changes in the late (19)60s. And I left really at that transition point to the transition between relatively apolitical and politicized in (19)65. The war was still often some far off place. And Cuba, as I said, was more the focus that people did not know where Vietnam was. Beer, pot had not yet made its way onto the college campus. So there was a sea change in the mid (19)60s, and I was a graduate student at GW living at home, commuting to my classes. And that is a very different environment within which to sort of keep up with what is going on. I was not into dorms. I had a part-time job. I was working, trying to do graduate birth. And so for those two years in Washington, I was in a very different environment. And those were pretty critical years itself. (19)65 to (19)67, I was in DC. And then in (19)67 I continued my graduate work in New York. And that again was a completely different environment and community.

SM (02:03:40):
How about the women's movement singers that kind of identified with that? I only mentioned one in particular, Helen Reddy, "Because I am a woman." And that was, we are talking the (19)72 to (19)76 period with that. And another singer at that time was Anne Murray, who was very popular. And Olivia Newton John came out around then too. So they were all three of those then. And those were three very popular female singers at the time with hit after hit after hit.

HK (02:04:13):
Although I am more inclined to pick out songs and pick out artists because they were very few women who would be seeing, it would be, I guess the (19)80s before you had Holly Ne and Meg Christian. Holly Near was in concert with Ronnie Gilbert, the Weavers. And they did a show which had strong feminist roots and overtones that when I was trying to teach students about some of the issues, I mean politicians like Bella Abzug, writers like Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan. But I had to pick out individual songs. I mentioned The Exciters, "Tell him."

SM (02:05:10):
See, I had never heard of them.

HK (02:05:12):
Well-

SM (02:05:12):
Oh, I heard that song.

HK (02:05:19):
"Tell him right now."

SM (02:05:20):
Yeah.

HK (02:05:21):
So it is, "You girl, need to take charge of your own life. Do not wait for him to ask you. You ask him." I thought for the most important songs was Loretta Lynn "The Pill." You have, what is it? You something. You have set this chicken your last time. Now that I have got the pill. I mean, Loretta Lynn was pregnant with her first child when she was 50 or 60. And somewhere in the early 70s, her song of her declaration, it ain't going to happen anymore, is "The Pill." And to me, that was a song which pulled it all together. Now, she was criticized by country audiences did not like it, but this was a personal statement on her part. What other songs would I include? Because it is one thing to pick on music where a man has written words that a woman is to sing. How much authenticity was there in Diana Ross's in the Get? Not Diane Ross Love Child, it is Diane or Diana Ross singing about implying that she was one of these and now she does not want to become the mother of another love child who has nothing. But did audiences find that authentic? I think The Pill by Loretta Lynn, they could say, okay, this is first story. This is how she really feels. So music that, how much of the anti, where music was authentic versus commercial.

SM (02:07:11):
A really good song from that period is The Love Unlimited Orchestra. They sang a song about women. We are the carryon, the generation after generation. I had it right out in my car, in fact. I play that. I Love Unlimited Orchestra.

HK (02:07:27):
Right. I cannot place it. And that is where I go to one of my references. But yeah, it is.

SM (02:07:34):
Barry White's love on unlimited orchestra. Yeah. But the women singer and the main singer is Barry's wife, who's one of the lead singers in the center. And it is a very good song. How about the-

HK (02:07:48):
So I guess I would put in that category of women who were influential and whose pictures I showed, what is her name? Bobby King, the tennis player.

SM (02:07:59):
Billy Jean King.

HK (02:08:00):
Billy Jean King. Yeah. And so it was okay, but there was, to my mind, precious little music to support. In other words, I Am Woman Becomes the Anthem. But that is, that is still pretty commercial. And I think that was playing with Billy Jean was carried in for her. Yeah. Tennis match with Bobby Riggs, for example.

SM (02:08:22):
See, I thought you were starting to say Bobby Gentry where she was a singer. Oh, it is Billy Joe. Yeah, she, yes. Well-

HK (02:08:30):
I mean, women's lib, there were songs about women's lib. One of the most forceful that went to number one was Harper Valley PTA.

SM (02:08:37):
Yes-yes-yes.

HK (02:08:38):
Jane Riley the day my mama socked it too. A bunch of hypocrites, et cetera. But you really have to go search for titles there. Maybe. I did not think there was that much Vietnam until I really began looking at it.

SM (02:08:54):
How about the environmental movement? Because Earth Day was 1970. And I always think of John Denver when I think of John Denver, Rocky Mountain High. And I think another one I think of is Michael Murphy Wildfire. Those are the two, when I think of the environment, I think of those two.

HK (02:09:11):
Whose garden was this, which I think is Tom Paxton.

SM (02:09:14):
Okay.

HK (02:09:15):
Or neighborhood, big yellow taxi. They took away the trees and put up a parking lot. So again, give me one second.

SM (02:09:24):
Yeah. And I am take a break here on this thing.

HK (02:09:33):
Okay, take a look. So this is the syllabus or the outline for my class. So here we have (19)69 through (19)72. I would begin each class with what I call the chart sweep, which is a couple of seconds of each number one. And that is, that has survived me. That will be on the web long after I am gone. All right, so shift in cultural values. Materialism, Mercedes-Benz.

SM (02:09:59):
Oh, wow.

HK (02:10:00):
And door number three.

SM (02:10:05):
Oh yeah.

HK (02:10:05):
Moon Landing, Woodstock, Vietnam, Kent State, death of a Beatle, interest in religion, radicalization and shift shifter extremes. Helter Skelter. The Beatles song called Free Charlie Manson. The underside where the Fugs, well-

SM (02:10:26):
That is what is his name. Ed Sanders.

HK (02:10:28):
Ed Sanders.

SM (02:10:29):
Yep.

HK (02:10:29):
Exactly. All right. And then we get new social concerns. Birthday, very commoner.

SM (02:10:39):
Oh wow.

HK (02:10:39):
Mercy. Mercy. New the Ecology.

SM (02:10:41):
Oh yes, that is right.

HK (02:10:42):
Rachel Carson. John Denver's version of whose Garden Women's Movement. Okay. I am Woman, the pill, unborn child.

SM (02:10:51):
C as in cross.

HK (02:10:52):
Anti-abortion.

SM (02:10:52):
Yes.

HK (02:10:53):
So Vietnam, winding down, Watergate, Morays in transition, the streak. Sex, drugs, rock and roll. Love to Love You babies on there. Welcome the Wild Side, Lou Reed. So these are my topical songs that I use. Disco sounds called The Decorative Excess and Self-Indulgence. Disco techs. Studio 54 YMCA.

SM (02:11:20):
Village People.

HK (02:11:21):
Yeah.

SM (02:11:24):
Yeah.

HK (02:11:24):
TV Ford.

SM (02:11:27):
Very Shaping.

HK (02:11:28):
Yeah. Sounds the past. This is the oldies guy.

SM (02:11:33):
Any Native American. I mentioned Bill Miller. Course, he does not have any hits. But he is a real popular Native American singer. And the other one was, I think America, the song America, the Horse With No Name. And then-

HK (02:11:54):
Yeah, the Group America Where the Horse, yeah.

SM (02:11:55):
Yeah.

HK (02:12:01):
Late (19)40s. This begins to get into it. I began with cowboy culture, the qualities of heroes, the cowboy, hoppy Jean and Me, Happy trails. Differences from the Midwest to country music. Wow. Black music, unless it conforms to white standards. So baseball role models television. Right. There is Arthur Godfrey slap her down again, my gosh. Fighting the Red Menace. And then next thing you know, we are in the early (19)50s, and so this is where I began playing portions of every one of the songs. Korea, TV. Here we go, teaching conformity. How do duty time? How do you do these dos and do nots? Ducking cover drills.

SM (02:12:55):
Dennis the Menace.

HK (02:12:55):
Good versus bad. Dennis the Menace, open up your heart. Religion and how important-

SM (02:13:01):
Winkler's house party just passed away.

HK (02:13:03):
Yup. And their impact on the elections, baseball-

SM (02:13:09):
Wow.

HK (02:13:10):
McCarthyism, country music. And then rhythm and blues, sex, drugs, rock and roll. And then here is where we begin to get old role models replaced from Eddie Fisher for Christmas to the Wild Ones and black then Trousers. And so this is how I taught American history and values. And here we get rock and roll and youth culture, juvenile delinquency with all of the stuff in between. So as you can tell, music becomes the-

SM (02:13:45):
Yeah, I even broke it down here, Latino issues. I think of when I think of that, I think of Jose Feliciano. If there are any-

HK (02:13:56):
The first Latino artist, rock and roll artist was at least, and if you go by the historians, Richie Balans with La Bamba and Right. That would be the first one. But until you get folks like Ricky Martin, I was never consciously aware of, I mean, what is her name? Selena?

SM (02:14:22):
Yeah. The one that died?

HK (02:14:23):
Yeah. Again, it was not music that ever appealed to me. It was not music that I had listened to. So it is one I would call the sub-genres, the niche musics that I am sure was very popular for some artists. But you can only listen to so much. Or I, let me put it this way, I chose to only listen to so much. And I chose things that connected me. I listened to Credence Clearwater, because that was late (19)60s. That sounded like mid (19)50s. And I listen to Bob Seger because that is early (19)80s that reminded me of Rock and Roll and John Mellencamp. Those are the musicians whose music is closest to what I consider my music. So there, there is worlds and worlds out there that I personally cannot relate to that that may have played as important a role in somebody else's life as this music played in life.

SM (02:15:24):
Well, you mentioned earlier, you already mentioned a lot of these people, but these people all really influence the boomer generation, the folk singers. Unfortunately, Phillips did not live very long, but took his own life. But Phil Ochs, Arlo Guthrie, these are popular on college campuses too. Pete Seeger, Melanie, Richie Havens, Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, Laura Nero, who is I think unbelievable. Leonard Cohen. Still going strong.

HK (02:15:50):
Yep.

SM (02:15:51):
Of course, Joan Baez and I got Holly New here, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Donovan. And I think one of the songs that I really love about Elvis was in the Ghetto in the beginning, because I could listen to that all day long. And he started giving Soso messages and his music in the ghetto. And so these were all had an influence on me. And I am very fortunate to have seen all of these people, except I never saw Peter, Paul, and Mary. But I have seen all the rest of them. But I am very fortunate to have seen them live. These are just some, are some of the general questions I ask everyone now. These can be really fast. Just share your thoughts.

HK (02:16:38):
I am not used to, well, you can see that I am happy to talk for as much time as you will give me.

SM (02:16:40):
Well, yeah. Actually my interviews have actually been, all of them have been fairly long, with the exception of, because what has happened is we get into a lot of things and people say, well, we can go on. And I narrow these down though. But describe the following years in your own words, as a person who is affiliated with the boomer generation, I consider you part of it because I would concern anybody after 1940, really pre-boomers. But when you think of the years 1946 to 1960, forget the music. What does that period mean to you overall?

HK (02:17:16):
My first memories were 1946, my first ride in the car in Holland, that with his work for the government, had occasionally had access to a car. And my parents were looking for a place because our home had been bombed and they were. So I was farmed out to friends. And right before Christmas (19)46, they had evidently found a place and the dad came and picked me up in a car and there was a Christmas tree in the back. And I was three years old. That is the first thing I remember. I was in Holland from (19)46 until (19)51, going to school, learning about socialization, loving sports, loving music. I still have some of my report cards. It was a Montessori education. And my teacher described me as always busy, always with things in my pockets, always interested in things. So I thought, all right. They had me pegged off, pegged fairly early on. And that I am not singing a tremendous change. Going from a seven-year old in Holland and 10 days later, being in a country where I did not speak the language, it made family that much more important. We were a very close family. Meals together, vacations, holidays, weekends. That was true for the next 20 years. So family focused somewhat of an extrovert, and it did not take very long to become what acculturated, as I said, popular culture, bubble down cards, stuff like that was very important. Dad did not feel that TV was in our best interest. So we did not get a first TV until 1960, which is a long time after.

SM (02:19:24):
So you did not see 1950s TV then.

HK (02:19:30):
No, not quite.

SM (02:19:32):
Did not see Howdy Doody?

HK (02:19:35):
The neighbors crossed the alley, right. But no TV at home. So it was reading. I had always been a reader and still preferred books to publish. So the first couple of years in elementary school here, were adjusting to a different country. I can remember the point. And that would be seventh grade. So-

HK (02:20:03):
The point, and that would be seventh grade. So four years in, four or five years, in 1956 where I suddenly realized that I was dreaming in English and that I had switched cultures. My parents spoke Dutch to me, I answered them in Dutch, I spoke English with my brothers and with everybody around me. So I grew up bilingual. But in 1957, the dominant language became English and I concluded that from the fact that the soundtrack of my dreams had switched from Dutch to English. Now what is really interesting is I can go back to Holland for a couple of weeks and find myself dreaming in Dutch again. I have been able to maintain-

SM (02:20:50):
You have not forgotten what the language...

HK (02:20:54):
In fact, one of the nice things is that when I am in Holland, I get compliments on the fact that after 60 years that my Dutch is still very, very good.

SM (02:21:02):
Pretty good.

HK (02:21:03):
Yeah.

SM (02:21:04):
How about the years 1961 to seven?

HK (02:21:07):
Well, the most important years would really be from about (19)56 to (19)60. This is junior high school and high school. I look back on those days very positively and I mean, there are people who cringe at junior high and high school, I went to a public school in Washington. It was almost without exception, in fact, I cannot think of, I liked going to school, I liked learning, I did well. Now those are probably connected and I am not sure which causes which. Very active in high school, I ran track in cross country. I captained teams. I was treasury in student council. So, successful high school, had friends, went to parties. Adolescence was pretty easy. I collected records. I was invited to parties, at least it helped, the fact that I brought my carrying case, 45s and I have very pleasant memories. And from (19)56 to (19)60 each summer I can tell you what the most popular songs were. I kept a journal that is illustrated with sheet music and records. So junior high and high school, very positive. I got into the school I wanted to go to in 1961 and I had four very good years at Duke. Learned a great deal, had some excellent professors. As I said, it was still a fairly traditional campus at that point, although, what can I compare it to? But politically, Duke was not all that active. Got out, spent the next five years in graduate school, two years getting a master's at GW, again, a good experience. Three years in New York getting a PhD. Met my future wife and music was there. I took my records with me to school. I played them. I won contests. I established an expertise. So I feel fortunate that I can sit back and if asked, "What would you do differently if you could?" I really cannot think of anything. And there were obviously, I flunked an occasional test, got an F on a paper once. But when I think back, I have been incredibly fortunate. And if that creates difficulty, it is that somehow, I assume that my adolescence, my youth, my experiences are typical and in fact they are probably extremely atypical. Third of four children, upper middle-class family. International, we traveled extensively when I was a kid because my father was entitled to home leave. So every three years we would sail first class on ships like the Queen Mary, go to Holland, visit Europe, come back. I was encouraged to think of these as learning experiences. Dad would encourage us to learn about the currencies, to learn a couple dozen words in each language. When you go to Paris, you try and speak French, you eat French foods, you taste wines. And it took a long time for me to realize that this was not the way most of my classmates were growing up.

SM (02:25:30):
I am going to give you a test here, right, because a song that was very popular was Debbie Reynolds-

HK (02:25:39):
Tammy.

SM (02:25:40):
...Tammy. What year?

HK (02:25:41):
The year is 1957.

SM (02:25:43):
Yeah.

HK (02:25:44):
Yeah. Shall I pull it out for you? Take me about less than 30 seconds.

SM (02:25:48):
Yeah, do you want to pull Tammy out. And the other one I have here is Jimmy Rogers and Honeycomb.

HK (02:25:53):
Honeycomb, right.

SM (02:25:56):
They were real big hits.

HK (02:25:59):
(19)71 to (19)74, I was overseas teaching, so (19)70, (19)71 in Asia. But for the next couple of years, my life was very different. I was living for 12 weeks on a military base in a different country. It was have notes, will travel. I had a VW Camper outfitted. I carried a typewriter, I carried a briefcase with notes for my various courses. I had some books with me. And if I taught Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings on Thursday night, I would hop into my car and if I was in Greece for example, I would start going to visiting various places. The car was a camper, so I slept in the car. But for four years I learned a great deal about teaching under an interesting set of circumstances, whether it was in the war or on the air base in Spain, for example, where textbooks did not arrive until the eighth week of a 12-week class that I had to teach a course in abnormal psychology, without a textbook. There were libraries on base, I learned to be self-sufficient. I learned difference between teaching undergraduate students and teaching adults. Saw the world. I learned that I could coexist with the military, which was important because I had military students. I was living on military basis. I disagreed with the war, which was still ongoing. But I tried to make sure that that did not have an impact on how I viewed my students because it would have been too easy to, we can tune them out because we are military and he is anti.

SM (02:28:10):
But this is a question I have asked everyone. There is two basic questions. Number one, when all the divisions that took place in America during the (19)60s and (19)70s, have we healed as a nation from all of these divisions? Or will most members of the boomer generation be going to their graves not healing like many did in the Civil War? This question came up when we took a group of students to see Senator Edmund Muskie in the mid (19)90s through one of our Leadership on the Road programs. And we thought he was going to talk about 1968 because he was the vice president for running Maine. And he did not even respond in that way. The whole issue of whether, we are talking about 74 million people here in the boomer generation. But do you feel, you, through the music, you have seen it, the music has talked about these divisions and the term, what we call the tremendous divide. Do you expect a nation or a group of so many people to heal? Or is it abort?

HK (02:29:20):
I do not know. I think the current cultural forces are, again, not to bring together, but to push further apart. That is an emphasis on differences, polarization. And I find that personally distressing because of the way I was raised. The emphasis was on find commonalities. And now we have papered it, any politician who tries to find commonalities is going to be voted out in primaries because Democrats do not, neither side wants to find common ground. Both sides are pushing to differentiate themselves. And to me, this is, now part of it may be Holland, small country, the amount of personal space, far less, always a greater emphasis on what you do needs to be consistent with society, i.e. that the notion of individual liberties are valued less than doing something for the common good. Again, I think that is a trend which is going in the wrong direction, that there may be an overemphasis. I think that we could get a whole lot further if there were more emphasis on common good as opposed to what is in it for me.

SM (02:31:02):
What did the Vietnam War teach you as a person?

HK (02:31:08):
It forced me to reconsider. It is very easy to be against the war when you are on campus and you are in a very safe environment, an environment that was very far removed from the realities of war. But, my lessons on war, were learned from my parents because they had lived through the Second World War and they remembered the First World War. Dad was not a pacifist, but he was certainly, he was wary of, I mean, he knew what war was like having lived in an occupied country. He had been jailed by the Germans. We were very lucky that we escaped alive. So there was nothing glorious. There was nothing positive. We see war films that there is nothing heroic about, but war is nasty. And dad would say one of the reasons that many Americans seem to have different attitude is, if the US had ever been invaded, and if the US had ever been occupied, then there might be a far lesser tendency to get involved in wars. That it is easy to support wars at a distance. And one of the big changes of course in the US was when the war in Vietnam, was brought home on television. When Americans began seeing death and destruction and villages being burned and people being shot. Those images to my mind, cannot help but change how you feel about a war. And so there is still people who argue that it was the TV and the media which turned country against war. Well, I do not see how a country could ever be in favor of war. You may support ... World War II was different, but to be in favor of war to me just does not make sense. It means you do not really understand what war is all about. Because having been in one, I do not think you would ever want to be in another one.

SM (02:33:41):
Coming from another country, but coming by the age of seven, as you even said earlier, you felt like you are America now as opposed to being in Holland. What are your thoughts on the boomer generation? What have been your thoughts throughout your lifetime when you were growing up with them, when you saw them on college campuses, not only those who served in the war, but those who were against the war, and then many of them did not do either, but did you have any perceptions about this generation of 74 million people? What were their strengths? What were their weaknesses? Can you do that? The people that you have known who are boomers? Some people say they cannot talk about 74 million, but they can only talk about the people they have known or seen, and then they are not afraid to talk. Yeah, just your thoughts on them.

HK (02:34:37):
It requires stepping back. I mean, boomers are simply the people I grew up with and the boomer generation lived at a time when I was alive and they were experiencing the things that I was experiencing. So it is easier for me, especially as an academic, to take a step back and talk about Gen X because that is not me. And I can look at them-

SM (02:34:58):
Born after (19)65. Yeah.

HK (02:35:02):
...And I have spent considerable time looking at generational differences in terms of how they impact, let us say business. I have taught generational differences. I train now, corporations to understand why there may be difficulties when you are working with people whose experiences are so different.

SM (02:35:24):
Oh yeah.

HK (02:35:26):
Try working for an intelligence agency when the new people coming in expect to be able to bring in their PDAs and to text and to tell people about what they do, which is the exact opposite of the whole culture of, "No, you have a security clearance and therefore you cannot talk about what you do." So I studied that from a more or less subjective point of view. I supervised for many, many years and had to learn that you need to deal differently. But my expectation by and large was when you come to work for this organization, you have to go more than halfway to adapt to it. I mean, there are certainly new technologies. I was an early adapter of computers and there were people who were in government when I left in 2006 who were still not using computers. But I do not text. My cell phone is a jitterbug. I do not keep it on. Our daughter still does not understand how we do not want to be totally connected to everyone at all times. I am much more private in that. So when I look back on our generation, I think we have had incredible opportunities. The changes in technology, to me, the most important change is when I discovered the internet as a research tool. And I have made full use of that. But are we a great generation? It is not something I thought about. It may be interesting. I am helping plan my high school's 50th reunion next year. We have not met as a class since our 20th, so it will be 30 years-

SM (02:37:25):
Wow.

HK (02:37:25):
...Between contacts with my high school classmates and just getting together with these folks may give me a perspective that I do not have right now. We certainly were more different from our parents than our parents were from their parents. So there were major changes that took place in the mid (19)50s. As I said, youth culture, youth was discovered by advertisers, by record companies, that there was this new market. And once that new market was discovered, who had to be treated differently. But how do I set myself apart? I do not know.

SM (02:38:27):
Well, one of the things is, I always ask too, a lot of boomers felt they were the most unique generation in history because when they were young, there was this positive feeling that they were going to do the change agents for the betterment of society, that they were going to end the war, sexism, homophobia, they were going to change the world from peace to love. Well, obviously that has not happened. And I have actually had some strong criticism of this generation from many different directions, although, and others really just praising it up and down.

HK (02:39:04):
I think that that is an expected conceit, that our generation is the best. We are the best. I certainly encountered this and you have been at the classroom long enough that for college-aged students, for many history begins at the point at which they become involved. In other words, do not tell me about the 1940s. I am not interested in anything that happened before I was born. Okay, that is the conceit that what you did is irrelevant and the only relevance is what I am experiencing or doing right now. Maybe you need to hit 60 or 50 at least before you realize that that is a little narrow. You begin to appreciate your parents more when you were raising your own kids and your parents become smarter as you get older. So I think a lot of the criticism is based on who is making it at what point they are in their lives. Yeah. Where did I hear this thing? I think my brother, my baby brother who is 64, sent this to me and a report of a conversation at a football game, a couple of college students giving somebody our age a hard time. We are the ones who have done this, this and this and what have the other done. And I think the answer was, "Well, my generation's the one that invented the computer that has allowed you to do these things right now. And what have you invented that has had a comparable impact?" I mean an iPhone or iTunes, these are nice things, but have any recent inventions changed how we think, how we operate, how we direct more so than the computer? So before you get too critical of the old generation, whether it is the boomers or whatever, what have you really accomplished?

SM (02:41:21):
Do you like the term boomer? This is a big question because I have mixed feelings on this too. What is great about the boomer generation is they can argue about everything and they do. Oh, but do you like the term boomer? It is like a lot of people that criticize the term boomer do not like the greatest generation for World War II or the Generation X or today's Millennials, or the Silent generation.

HK (02:41:49):
I look at it as a label. I have never particularly cared for labels. I am who I am. And labels are shorthand and sometimes labels become shorthand for lazy thinking. Somehow you can clump all of these people together. Now, boomers, the only thing that boomers share for certain is that they were born in the same timeframe. But beyond that you have got lots of stories that you can compare. But I think that my upbringing, my background and what I did with it is probably very, very different from somebody who could have been born on November 15th, 1943, just like I was. And so the only thing that we would have in common is we were born on the same day, but we were born in different countries in different families. And our experience from the time of our birth to right now has been very different. And so although we are both boomers, we may have nothing else in common except that birthday. So this is why this kind of in-depth oral history, I think you are going to find that you cannot accurately capture by a label like boomers.

SM (02:43:10):
I have asked the same people, is there a term they would use. And of course the terms that other people have used, the Vietnam generation, the Woodstock generation, the protest generation, the movement generation, they are all using adjectives to describe the boomers experience.

HK (02:43:34):
Maybe it is authors like you who have to try and put this together to pull out the commonalities and show where the differences are. That just because somebody was born and grew up in this timeframe, it does not mean that we can accurately predict A, B, C and D. The best instance of that occurred to me very late. I was teaching a course on music in wartime for the University of Maryland sometime in the early (19)80s, I think. And this went, the class required me to go back to the Civil War and just using the term civil war in my class, I got some very strange looks. And it turned out that some of my students had never studied the Civil War. They were familiar with the war between the states. And I said, "Okay, let us make this a teaching moment. Where did you grow up, Indiana? All right, what did you learn? Okay, A,B,C. Where did you grow up, Alabama? What did you learn?" And it was two entirely different histories, two entirely different notions of the same event because one person had been born and raised and taught in Indiana from a certain perspective, a certain textbook, somebody else had learned the same time period in a school in Alabama. Imagine what it is going to be like if you come out of the Texas school system a couple of years from now as opposed to, let us say the Massachusetts school system. These people will have very, very different concepts of some very important ideas, issues, et cetera. Were you taught creationism as opposed to evolution or intelligent design? If that is part of your background, that is part of your family and part of your education. Were you homeschooled? Were you taught public schools, probing schools? Your view of the world will be very much affected by what was there. And so the generation you are part of will end up being less important than, all right, within that generational timeframe, who was influencing you? Were your parents college educated? Did you go to college? But those are the questions that are ultimately more important.

SM (02:46:09):
The word that comes out here so often is context. And what makes this project I am involved in by interviewing people like you and others, is the in depth, not only the complexity, trying to explain the complexity of the times, but that everybody's experiences is unique and real and truthful and genuine. And by doing this, I am hoping to make these interviews into seven sections where there is learning, these are learning. I want high school students and college students to read this book so that I do not have to hear any more that the Vietnam War was before World War II. And I have heard that from, and these are students that had very high SAT scores.

HK (02:46:57):
Yes.

SM (02:46:58):
I actually, I had a student, well, I will tell you later, a person who got the highest score you can get in an SAT. She is the one that told me about the Vietnam War. How did she get through high school? I am just amazed. So just a couple more minutes here. Not much. This is almost done. I am not going to go any further. I am not going to ask you about other things. But is there any one event that had the greatest impact in your life? Just one event, a historic event, whether it be an assassination or is there any one event that had greater impact than any other?

HK (02:47:37):
Yes. And it would have to be the move from Holland to the US. And it was turning my world upside down, at seven years old, you would have a limited concept, but the idea of leaving your country, your friends, your school, and moving to a place where you know no one accept your own family members and where you do not speak the language. So that in retrospect, that had to be the key thing that had an impact.

SM (02:48:19):
Why did the Vietnam War end in your viewpoint?

HK (02:48:21):
Why did it end? Because it could not continue. One can come up with Congress refused to fund it. You could come up with we are losing or we certainly could not win. You could argue that by 1972, public opinion had turned so far against the war that politically it was untenable to continue. Probably some of each of those. And did it end in (19)72 or did it not end until (19)75? I mean, you can argue, when did the Vietnam War-

SM (02:49:15):
It was 1973 when we were holding out.

HK (02:49:19):
January (19)73.

SM (02:49:20):
Yeah.

HK (02:49:21):
...Or was it (19)75, the Fall of Saigon? But I think America retired, got fed up. Congress would no longer fund. Public opinion had, not 180, but certainly the public opinion had shifted dramatically against the war. So all of those, I think, when you bring them together, spelled an end for the Vietnam War.

SM (02:49:50):
I have got a lot of those questions, but I am going to end it with this one. And that is being succinct, I think you only got about a minute and a half here. What do you think the lasting legacy will be of this generation? And when I say 74 to 78 million, we cannot even figure out how many were actually boomers right now, but what will be the lasting legacy once the best history books are written, say 50 years from now or when the last boomers have passed on.

HK (02:50:16):
Can I say what I hope our legacy will be? That we raised our kids well. In other words, that we raised a generation that respects some things that were not respected before. Equality, whether it is in voting rights, public accommodations, that we raised a generation which is more open-minded, more adventuresome, more willing to go out and explore the world. More global in terms of its thinking. And my regret is that right now I do not see that. So I do not think that what we believe we accomplished in the (19)60s has successfully been passed on and is now being taught by our children to our grandchildren. I think it is some of the same narrowness, some of the same generational differences. The gulfs are still there. So have we improved the country? Is the US better off now than it was in the (19)50s? In some areas, yes. But in some ways my answer's no, I do not think so.

SM (02:51:35):
All right. Thank you.

(End of Interview)

Date of Interview

2010-05-01

Interviewer

Stephen McKiernan

Interviewee

Hugo Keesing

Biographical Text

Dr. Hugo Keesing is a Dutch-American popular culture historian, an educator and a pop music archivist who has an extensive collection of Vietnam war music. He has degrees from Duke University, George Washington University and a Ph.D. in Behavior Research from Adelphi University.

Duration

171:38

Language

English

Digital Publisher

Binghamton University Libraries

Digital Format

audio/mp4

Material Type

Sound

Interview Format

Audio

Subject LCSH

Popular culture—United States; Historians; Keesing, Hugo--Interviews

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Keywords

Music; Generation gap; Bobby Rydell; Baseball cards; Collectibles; Elvis Presley; Arthur Godfrey; The Beatles; Young Americans for Freedom; Adelphi University; Vietnam War; Baby boom generation; Steve Perry; MacArthur Park.

Files

Hugo Keesing.jpg

Item Information

About this Collection

Collection Description

Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s and 2010s. The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and… More

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Citation

“Interview with Dr. Hugo Keesing,” Digital Collections, accessed March 28, 2024, https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/905.